Notes

Abstract

SIR WILLIAM MACCORMAC, President of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, delivered the Hunterian Oration on Tuesday afternoon in the theatre of the college in the presence of the Prince of Wales and a large and distinguished company. He rapidly reviewed the events of Hunter's life, enumerated his chief contributions to biological and surgical science, described his methods in research and in instruction, and paid a warm tribute to the astonishing range of his investigations, the magnitude of his actual achievement, and the far-reaching influence he had exercised on the subsequent development of surgery. In the course of his address, the Times reports him to have remarked: “In the first instance Hunter's work was biological, his range including both the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and the mineral kingdom as well, and to illustrate his investigations he became a collector. But he was chiefly and finally a surgeon, and to the development of surgery he brought all the knowledge and all the training which he had acquired in other branches of science. He carries us beyond mere handicraft and detail into the region of general principles and law. The surgery of the Middle Ages was a trade, Ambroise Paré and Jean Louis Petit converted it into an art, John Hunter elevated it to the rank of a science. Hunter's life and work inspired his successors with the spirit of observation, investigation, and experiment. We see this exemplified in his great followers Cline, Abernethy, Astley Cooper, Travers, Green, Brodie, Lawrence, and others since their time. They have been makers of English surgery, and each in turn has done much to raise it to that high standard which it has always maintained.”