The Hunterian Oration / delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London. On the 14th of February, 1839.

  • Edward Stanley
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hunterian Oration / delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons, in London. On the 14th of February, 1839. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    We live in an age when literary and scientific emi¬ nence are justly regarded of importance, as they conduce to the glory of a nation; and our station in public opinion depends mainly on the connection which surgery has formed with general science. All the arrangements of our time tend to the equalization of surgery. To no future historian instituting a com¬ parative view of the surgery of the present period in the various countries of the civilized world, will it be permitted to state, that it was flourishing in one coun¬ try and languishing in another. His representation will be, that in the nineteenth century by the spirit of activity, every where prevailing; surgery for the first time in its history, became uniform in its character and proceedings, exercised in all civilized countries with the like intelligence, every where with the same good results. A better history of Nature, says Lord Bacon, is wanting for Philosophy. So large a contribution to this history has Mr. Hunter furnished, that on this ground alone, would his name be consigned to posterity as a benefactor to mankind. We, moreover, owe to Mr. Hunter the formation of the principles of surgery. If such be the right estimate of his merits, posterity has done that which justice warrants and reason guides, in awarding to his memory the honour of this com¬ memoration, associating thereby the name of Hunter with the successive advances of surgery to be recorded,
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