Page:The Hunterian Oration,1838.djvu/38

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THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.

England has been rapid and glorious beyond all precedent; that the successful cultivation of surgical pathology, and the skilful practice of operations founded upon a more correct anatomy and a sounder physiology, have pre-eminently distinguished the Hunterian school. In saying this without reservation, I am not unmindful of the proper and acknowledged merits of the schools of France, Germany, and Italy; of Desault, of Richter, and of Scarpa; nor of our claims to class the latter, as well as the founders of the American school of surgery, among the disciples of Hunter.

In a bare enumeration of the practical subjects which have been, as it were, recast, it would be impossible to omit the mention of the several forms and modes of inflammation, including tumors and morbid growths; wounds and fractures of all descriptions; the pathology of the vascular and nervous systems, of hernia, of the eye, the joints, the excretory and sexual organs, their special diseases, and the treatment of all respectively. Last, but not least, let me add, the better understanding of the relations and reciprocal influences of the nervous and vascular systems, of which the dué equipoise constitutes health, and the derangements, more or less reciprocal, symptomatize, if they do not constitute, disease.

Can it be questioned that these grand additions to our scientific and practical knowledge,—with confi-