The Hunterian oration : Royal College of Surgeons of England, February 14th, 1895 / by J. W. Hulke.

  • Hulke, John Whitaker.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hunterian oration : Royal College of Surgeons of England, February 14th, 1895 / by J. W. Hulke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    work, perhaps, accounts for the imperfect recognition by so many of us of how much John Hunter also occupied himself in Botanical research. In one of several physiological papers, after discussing the agreements and the differences between that which he terms “ common or original matter and animate matter,”—or, as we should nowr express it, between inorganic and organic substances—and affirming the derivation of the latter from the former for the reason that “ animate is found to return to inanimate “ matter,” he proceeds to analyse the resemblances and the differences of the matter of which animals and vegetables are composed. He restricts to vege- tables the “ power of immediately converting common [f. e. inorganic] matter into their own kind; ” and from this he draws the inference that “ a vegetable seems an intermediate link between common and animal matter.” In his lectures on the Principles of Surgery, he re- views the “ accord [existing] between the physiologi- cal endowments of vegetables and those of animals.” He mentions that “ a self-moving power has been observed and is universally allowed in vegetables ”; and he adds that “this principle seems to be as much a property in vegetables as in animals.” He illustrates internal mechanical work done within the vegetable tissues by reference to Hales’s notable experiments on the rising of the sap in trees; and lie contrasts the magnitude of the force employed in this movement with that exerted in the heart’s