The Hunterian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on the 14th of February, 1849 / by Caesar H. Hawkins.

Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hunterian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on the 14th of February, 1849 / by Caesar H. Hawkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    And now also we are in a better position for answer- ing the question which has often been proposed,— granting his great eminence as an anatomist and physi- ologist, what has Mr. Hunter directly effected, as to the knowledge or the treatment of disease, that sur- geons always express for him so much admiration ? If even in this assembly there are some laborious surgeons, whose candid confession would be an acknow- ledgment that they had never studied the one greatest and most finished of his works, it is the same also with all writings which are profound and full of research ;— which require much knowledge, and much application of mind in the reader also, to understand the concep- tions of the teacher, engaged in following out his sub- ject in every possible point of view ; and which per- haps excite some alarm at the apparent vastness of the labour in prospect, as when Hunter apologizes thus:— I shall be a little abstruse in the present lecture, which I intend as an introduction to all animal matter. # Of such writings it must ever be, as was said by Bichat of the chief surgical works in Hunter's time, One hundred pens retrace every day what fifty have borrowed before them from twenty others, themselves only copyists. f Neither would a fair inference be drawn as to Hun- ter's influence on surgery, if it could be shown that * Works, vol. i. p. 211. ■f Cent plumes retracent chaque jour ce que cinquante avoient emprunte avant elles,de viugt autres elles-mernes copistes.—(Euvres ChirHrgicales de Dessault, T. 1, vi.