2 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
Hunterian oration, I thought it right to study afresh the character of John Hunter. And now I beg your leave to tell some of the facts and thoughts to which, in my study, I have been led — chiefly to tell, if I can, what were the motives of John Hunter in his scientific life ; what were the chief characters and what the method of his work ; to tell, also, some of his achievements, and of the lessons that may be read in the story of his life.
I hope that I may thus fulfil, however imperfectly, the design of the founders of the oration, by promoting the honour of John Hunter and, perhaps, even the pro- gress of surgery, by showing, in his illustrious example, the good influence of the scientific mind.
The motive which first urged John Hunter towards the pursuit of science seems to have been only the neces- sity of earning his livelihood. For we find him, at first, as the youngest child of a Scotch laird, idle and negligent of education. In the first twenty years of his life he appears to have had no inclination to science or to the arts that minister to it, or, indeed, to any kind of intellectual pursuit. We find no tales of early enterprise, no childish love of nature, no sign of future mental power. When he was seventeen, he tried to help a brother-in-law, who was a bankrupt cabinet-maker in Glasgow ; and, probably, if he had succeeded, cabinet-making might have been the business of his life. Happily, he failed ; his brother-in- law was past helping. Then, after two years more of idleness, what was to be done ?
His brother William Hunter, ten years older than himself, was prosperous in London, and was becoming
