Note 909 — Chapter V · (continued 3)

‘The majority of Hunter's contemporaries considered his pursuits to have little connexion with practice, charged him with attending to physiology more than surgery, and looked on him as little better than an innovator and an enthusiast.’ Ottley's Life of Hunter, p. 126. In a work, which was written by a surgeon only the year after Hunter died, the reader is told, in regard to his remarkable inquiries respecting animal heat, that ‘his experiments, if they be true, carry with them no manner of information:—if they be true, no effect for the benefit of man can possibly be derived from them.’ Foot's Life of Hunter, London, 1794, p. 116. At p. 225, the same practitioner reproaches the great philosopher with propounding ‘purely a piece of theory, without any practical purpose whatever.’ Foot, indeed, wrote under the influence of personal feelings, but he rightly judged that these were the sort of charges which would be most likely to prejudice the English public against Hunter. It never occurred to Foot, any more than it would occur to his readers, that the quest of truth, as truth, is a magnificent object, even if its practical benefit is imperceptible. One other testimony is worth quoting. Sir Astley Cooper writes of Cline: ‘His high opinion of Mr. Hunter shows his judgment; for almost all others of Mr. Hunter's contemporaries, although they praise him now, abused him while he lived.’ The Life of Sir Astley Cooper, by Bransby Blake Cooper, London, 1843, vol. ii. p. 337.