Note 907 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

Sir Benjamin Brodie says: ‘It is true that the essential parts of John Hunter's doctrines as to inflammation and its consequences are now so incorporated with what is taught in the schools, that to be acquainted with them you need not seek them in his works; but I recommend you, nevertheless, to make these your especial study, for the sake of the other valuable information which they contain, and the important views in physiology and pathology which, in almost every page, are offered to your contemplation.’ Brodie's Lectures on Pathology and Surgery, London, 1846, p. 25. ‘John Hunter, whose treatise on Inflammation is a mine in which all succeeding writers have dug.’ Watson's Principles and Practice of Physic, London, 1857, vol. i. p. 146. ‘The appeal to philosophical principles in Hunter's works was, indeed, the cause of their being a closed volume to his less enlightened contemporaries; but, though the principles implied or expressed, subjected them to the scorn and neglect of those less imbued with the spirit of philosophy, the results of those principles, verified as they were by facts, have gradually and insensibly forced themselves on the conviction of the profession; and though adopted silently, and without acknowledgment, as if the authors themselves had forgotten or were ignorant from whence they were derived, they now form the very groundwork of all books, treatises, and lectures on professional subjects.’ Green's Vital Dynamics, London, 1840, p. 81. Finally, I will quote the very recent testimony of Mr. Simon, who, in his masterly, and singularly beautiful, essay on Inflammation, has not only brought together nearly every thing which is known on that interesting subject, but has shown himself to be possessed of powers of generalization rare in the medical profession, or, indeed, in any other profession. ‘Without undue partiality, an Englishman may be glad to say that the special study of Inflammation dates from the labours of John Hunter. An indefatigable observer of nature, untrammelled by educational forms, and thoroughly a sceptic in his method of study, this large-minded surgeon of ours went to work at inflammation with a full estimate of the physiological vastness of his subject. He saw that, in order to understand inflammation, he must regard it, not as one solitary fact of disease, but in connexion with kindred phenomena—some of them truly morbid in their nature, but many of them within the limits of health. He saw that, for any one who would explain inflammation, all inequalities of blood supply, all periodicities of growth, all actions of sympathy, were part of the problem to be solved.’ … ‘He cannot be understood without more reflection than average readers will give; and only they who are content to struggle through a veil of obscure language, up to the very reality of his intent, can learn with how great a master they are communing.’ … ‘Doubtless, he was a great discoverer. But it is for the spirit of his labours, even more than for the establishment of new doctrine, that English surgery is for ever indebted to him. Of facts in pathology, he may, perhaps, be no permanent teacher; but to the student of medicine he must always be a noble pattern. Emphatically, it may be said of him, that he was the physiological surgeon. Others, before him (Galen, for instance, eminently), had been at once physiologists and practitioners; but science, in their case, had come little into contact with practice. Never had physiology been so incorporated with surgery, never been so applied to the investigation of disease and the suggestion of treatment, as it was by this master-workman of ours. And to him, so far as such obligations can be personal, we assuredly owe it that, for the last half-century, the foundations of English surgery have, at least professedly, been changing from a basis of empiricism to a basis of science.’ Simon on Inflammation, in A System of Surgery, edited by T. Holmes, London, 1860, vol. i. pp. 134–136.