10 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
charitable and temper calm, and his constant study how to do good.”*
If, with an intellectual people, surgery once established, could afterwards be lost, surprise may not be felt at one feature in our historical records, that anatomy and surgery have not been uniformly progressive with civilization. To a remarkable extent they have had their periods of rise and fall, flourishing in one age, decaying in the next. ‘ The edifice of medical science,” says a learned historian, ‘ begun at one period, languishing in the next, of insecure foundation in every age of past time, and perhaps worse defended than all other human arrangements against the caprice of man, and instability of fortune.”
Various and opposite circumstances haye, as might
- After the full enumeration of the qualities of a good physician,
the Hindoo sages add, “ should death come upon us under the care of this earthly saint, it can only be considered as inevitable fate, and not the consequence of presumptuous ignorance, and that one of the most happy indications of returning health is, when the sick person forgets not his God amongst his sufferings, but daily prostrates him- self in prayer with humility and resignation.”
The principal sources of information, relative to the medicine of the ancient Hindoos, are—
An Essay on the Antiquity of Hindoo Medicine. By J. F. Royle, M.D.
Tracts on India. By Dr. Heyne.
Materia Indica. By Whitelaw Ainslie, M.D.
Oriental Magazine, 1823 ; containing translations from the Sanscrit Medical Works, by Professor Wilson, of the Univer- sity of Oxford. �
