Note 883 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

In his Principles of Surgery, he says (Hunter's Works, vol. i. p. 220), ‘The human body is what I mean chiefly to treat of; but I shall often find it necessary to illustrate some of the propositions which I shall lay down from animals of an inferior order, in whom the principles may be more distinct and less blended with others, or where the parts are differently constructed, in order to show, from many varieties of structure, and from many different considerations, what are the uses of the same parts in man; or, at least, to show that they are not for the uses which have been commonly assigned to them; and, as man is the most complicated part of the whole animal creation, it will be proper, in the first place, to point out general principles, common to all this species of matter, that I may be better understood when I come to the more complicated machine, namely, the human.’