them may be ranked Poli, Scarpa, Blumenbach; and there were others, who, fortunately for the progress of surgery, developed some of his favourite ideas with more fulness and precision than their master himself, and strove to instil into their scholars the doctrines and practice of their great instructor.
One of the most distinguished of these was Aber- nethy. In his Essay on the Constitutional Origin of Local Diseases, he has most ably made out his point ; and both in the treatise and in his lectures, he surpassed John Hunter in the clearness with which he laid down the principle, and the practical tact with which he followed the law into its conse- quences.
Sir Astley Cooper, a still more illustrious name, was numbered among his pupils, and excelled him as a practical surgeon as much as he fell short of him in the qualities of a philosophic teacher. Every work of Cooper’s, however, was based on the most patient anatomical examination, and thus became a faithful commentary on nature _her- self. His treatises on Hernia, on Fractures and Dislocations, and on Diseases of the Breast, might found a reputation singly : what have they not done united ? |
John Thomson, too, still left to us, was another pupil of Hunter’s, who, in his celebrated work on Inflammation, followed out in a kindred spirit the views of his great master.
It is probably not going too far to say, that to the veneration in which these three distinguished men held the opinions and example of John Hunter,
