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President, the time forbids me to prolong this description of the merits of Professor Ruysch, and I shall conclude my notice of him with observing, that he was not thought unworthy of the society of princes : Peter the Great, during his stay in Holland, dined several times at his house; and such was the estimation, in which the Professor's talents were held in foreign countries, that, when a vacancy had been occasioned in the French Academy of Science, by the death of our illustrious Newton, Ruysch was the meritorious individual selected to replace him as a member of that learned body, in the same way as the great Morgagni afterwards was to fill up the void, produced in it by the death of Ruysch himself, in 1731.
Mr. President,—If the time had permitted, I should now have made some observations on the merits of Camper, Bertrandi, Cheselden, Samuel Sharp, and Baron Haller, not omitting a short notice of that constellation of shining members of the profession, who composed the Royal Academy of Surgery in France.