28 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
this for his patient with precision and safety. Let the philanthropist interested in whatever tends to the relief of human affliction, turn to the pages of our medical annals, * and there peruse the narrative by an intelligent and firm-minded man, of his sufferings under the operation of lithotomy, executed by the ablest of our surgeons. ‘“ When the words,” he tells us, “ Now, Sir, it is all over, struck his ear, the ejaculation, Thank God! did he utter, with a fervency of feeling and fulness of heart not to be conceived; that the most captivating vision to the sight, the most enchanting harmony to the ear, a combination of every thing calculated to delight, would fall short of the perfect blessedness of his situation at that instant of release from his tormentor.” Such is the picture to be contrasted with the modern proceeding which, in its favourable circumstances, bloodless, and without pain, effects a complete and permanent relief from the most distressing of maladies to which our frame can be subjected.
I fear to prolong in tediousness this bare enumeration of some, and but a few, of the efforts of modern surgery, yet, in connexion with the labours of Mr. Hunter, I cannot avoid a notice of proceedings recently instituted for the removal of certain deformities of the limbs existing from birth, interfering with progression, and often so unsightly in appearance as to haye been a source of distress even to the greatest of minds. The
- Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. x.
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