THE
HUNTERIAN ORATION.
- Mr. President, and Gentlemen,
Our motive in assembling on this day is to render me homage to the intellect of John Hunter, not simply because it was powerful, but on the higher consideration, that its powers were, with zeal and disinterested-ness, exerted for the benefit of mankind; and with so successful a result, that the works he has left us do not merely reflect the character and condition of medical science for the period in which he lived, but in the amount of actual discovery and original thought, have created the foundation of this science in its theory and practice, for the present, and future time. Accordingly, the biography of Hunter becomes the history of the foundation of medicine as one art, based on the highest order of science, for there are but few departments of natural or physical knowledge which do not in some degree contribute to it. Yet, with respect to the biography of Hunter, as was rightly observed by
