The Hunterian oration : delivered in the presence of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on the 13th of February, 1877 / by Sir James Paget.
- James Paget
- Date:
- 1877
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The Hunterian oration : delivered in the presence of his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, on the 13th of February, 1877 / by Sir James Paget. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![and watch, and question Nature ; he must compel her to answer, and then compare and interpret her answers and ])enetrate to their inmost meanings. And he could set no limit to his search. Within the range of the great world of life he must needs seek, by every metliod of enquiry, every kind and degree of knowledge. With this passion for knowledge of biology another concurred. Hunter had a passion for collecting. It may have come through imitation of his brother ; it may have been a mere yielding to the fashion of the time, as dominant then as it is now ; but I believe it was natural —an instinctive love of gathering and keeping ; and it was vehement in him, and worked together with his desire of knowledge, each animating and provoking the other. It cannot be maintained that Hunter’s love of collecting was only consequent on his desire of knowledge. Science determined its first direction ; and the great desire of his life was to have a grand museum, with ample and costly illustrations in catalogues and drawings. He would have collected, if he could, everything that could show to him- self and others all the great facts in biology that he could find. But even this could not satisfy his love of collect- ing ; for, besides his museum, he collected a crowd of things that must have been useless even to himself, and must have helped to make him poor; pictures of much cost, engravings, armour, works of art in ivory, bronze, marble, stuffed birds, and implements of savage warfare. With all these his house in Earl’s Court must have looked like a curiosity-shop.^ But if this were a fault it may easily be pardoned ; no eaiaiest collector ever binds](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28999149_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
