26 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
operations,” he adds, “are like the acts of the armed savage, who attempts to get that by force which a civilized man would get by stratagem.” Through all this, the great practical lesson to be inculcated is, that it has been through the science of surgery every improvement of note in its practice has been effected. We may remark how much more Pott would have done for the advance of surgery, had he lived immediately after, instead of being cotemporary with Hunter. Mr, Abernethy, possessed of the highest order of intellect, did, with the force of his eloquence, impress the truths which Hunter had expounded. He conferred on us an inestimable good, as he showed how, for the establishment of sound surgery, the philosophic views of Hunter are to guide us in the treatment of every derangement of function in an animal body. What can be accomplished by surgery without the science, the possession of which we can now boast, may be learnt by the perusal of the works of Wiseman, Sergeant-surgeon to Charles II. than whom, no man was more learned in his time, no man more acute in observing, and faithful in recording what he did, whether successful or otherwise. If we turn to his account of the treatment of the diseases of the joints, we find him employing the same remedies of which the modern surgeon avails himself, but wanting all the effect we give to these remedies, by the discrimination of the varieties and the conditions of disease, which modern obseryation �
