40 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION.
We live in an age when literary and scientific emi-
nence are justly regarded of importance, as they
conduce to the glory of a nation; and our station in
public opinion depends mainly on the connection
which surgery has formed with general scienée. All
the arrangements of our time tend to the equalization
of surgery. To no future historian instituting a com-
parative view of the surgery of the present period in
the various countries of the civilized world, will it be
permitted to state, that it was flourishing in one coun-
try and languishing in another. His representation
will be, that in the nineteenth century by the spirit of
activity, every where prevailing; surgery for the first
time in its history, became uniform in its character
and proceedings, exercised in all civilized countries
with the like intelligence, every where with the same
good results.
A better history of Nature, says Lord Bacon, is wanting for Philosophy. So large a contribution to this history has Mr. Hunter. furnished, that on this ground alone, would his name be consigned to posterity as a benefactor to mankind. We, moreover, owe to Mr. Hunter the formation of the principles of surgery. If such be the right estimate of his merits, posterity has done that which justice warrants and reason guides, in awarding to his memory the honour of this com- memoration, associating thereby the name of Hunter with the successive advances of surgery to be recorded, �
