from the unchanging or eternal, the created from the creating. Not that I would in the least disparage those who, since his time, have done such good work in this field, or would be ranged among the laudatores temporis acti, who find nothing new under the sun, who, gloating in their knowledge of the past, love to contrast the present unfavourably with it, and who, in the generalizations and speculative philosophies of former times, see foreshadowed the discoveries of our own. We, like our predecessors, dream of things that may be, and perhaps will be; and if all the dreams of the present were recorded, such multitudinous combinations of thoughts would surely be found to anticipate some of the views and discoveries of posterity. But such dreams, though they are based upon real thoughts and real knowledge, and are the produce of mental play upon them, are too vapourish and unsubstantial to fix themselves even upon ourselves, or to give a real impetus to any thing. No one will class Hunter among the dreamers -he was far from that; but he thought much, and apparently was in the habit of writing down his thoughts as they occurred. Some of these thoughts seem to point in directions which he probably did not contemplate. And as the students of Turner's pictures may discover many things which that great artist never intended to pourtray, so the reader of Hunter may fancy that he sees many things which that great thinker never imagined, or never imagined with the definiteness which would constitute a real idea,

But, it may be said, What good have Physiology

and reflections upon such abstruse subjects as the phenomena, nature and causes of life, done to Surgery? In what way, if at all, are the improvements which have taken place in the knowledge and treatment of disease attributable to the connection between Physiology and Surgery, which Hunter established? The direct dependence of the one upon the other may not, it is true, be always easy to show, for those agencies which have the greatest potency are not unfrequently the least apparent. There can, however, be little doubt in any thoughtful mind, that the influence of physiological views, with their associated mental culture, on the progress of Surgery during the last century, has been incalculably great, and has done more than anything, not only to pave the way for, but to engender, truer conceptions of disease, and better modes of treatment, and has, so, contributed vastly to elevate the tone and status of the profession, and to promote the welfare of mankind. Though we may not be able to trace the several improvements directly to the suggestions of Physiology, we may be certain that many of them would not have taken place without it. Even in the case of anesthetics, which apparently owed their employment exclusively to experimental evidence, we may fairly doubt whether they would not have been anathematised, as tending to curtail the penances which man had deserved, if their introduction had not been supported and justified by those better views of man's nature which are associated with a sounder knowledge of his physiology. It is all very well to talk of the practical character of

Surgery; but those who are best acquainted with its past history, and present position, will be most ready to acknowledge that there is no department of human work which has been so dominated by theory, as it ever has been, and still is, and that the most barbarous and baneful practices of by-gone times have been justified by, if they did not originate in, the most absurd, yet tightly clung to, views respecting morbid humours, cleansing processes, &c. How terrible were the inflictions which those theories wrought in the treatment of wounds; and what a satire was it upon the supposed practical and observant qualities of the surgeons of those days, that these monstrous theories and their disastrous results could be uprooted only by the substitution of the still more absurd, but less pernicious, theory of the 'sympathetic cure,' which transferred to the sinning weapon the noxious drugs which had previously been destined to torment the wound; and, in these last times, the acceptance of an antiseptic treatment is due, in no small degree, to the belief in a septic theory. The so-called most practical men, those who especially pride themselves upon this quality, are not unfrequently the veriest dupes to theory. They are the worst observers because they are the most prejudiced, and they most doggedly resist any innovations of treatment which are repugnant to what they conceive to be right, and to the views they have held with a determination proportionate to their groundlessness. Indeed it would seem to be a feature of human nature that the more erroneous a view, and the less of reason it can claim, the more tenaciously

is it held. Certainly, that which has least of reason in it is most impregnable to the assaults of reason.

If, then, the practice of Surgery has such close relation to theory, and is so dependent upon it, how important is it that the theory should be based upon sound principles, and be cultivated by the ablest minds. This most practical of sciences is no exception to the law which rules all science, the law that thought is the polar-star of work, and that without its guidance and help no real progress will be made.

This Hunter saw, with this view he laboured, and we must continue in the same direction. He recognised that Pathology is the keystone of Surgery, resting upon a wide reaching study of Physiology, on the one side, and careful clinical observation on the other. To the physiological side of the arch his own attention was chiefly directed. At least it is to his labours in this field that his influence was mainly due. To the still germinating and fructifying produce of his perceptions of the relation between Pathology and Physiology we owe a clearer estimation of the important generalization, which must form the foundation of all rational treatment, that morbid processes, and morbid structutes, are only modifications of, and deviations from, the processes and structures of health: that, in his own words, they result from "perversion of the natural actions of the animal economy," and that to understand either thoroughly, we must study it in relation to the other, and watch closely the transition of one into the other. It is on the steady prosecution of research in this direction that our hopes

for further advance in the theory, with associated better and more scientific treatment, of disease must chiefly rest; and the feeling that a ravaging cancer is but the produce of some modification of natural and benign processes, gives a craving for a clearer apprehension of those processes, and of the essence and stages of this terrible, though it may be slight, modification of them, and throws a glimmer of hope over the prospect of dealing with this, at present, most hopeless and dire, and, I fear, growing, scourge of civilized humanity.

To those whose duty it is, and it is the most trying part of their duty, to witness the protracted sufferings and the mortality caused by this and other allied diseases, and who long for the time when science will bring some alleviation or remedy on its wings, it is no small discouragement to be met by an appeal to humanity against them in their pursuit of that method of experimental investigation, which was resorted to by Hunter and Harvey, and all, or nearly all, those to whom the world has been most indebted for accessions of knowledge in this direction, and which is the only method by means of which much further advance can be made. The old and unceasing battle between reason and feeling, is being, unfortunately, waged upon this ground. We may be sure that victory will ultimately be, as it has under similar circumstances, always been, that the warm impulses which easily run into prejudice, and which are, as usual, fanned by readily credited exaggeration and misrepresentation, will ere long wane before the