The Hunterian oration for the year 1907 : being the sixty-third Hunterian oration since its foundation : delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons : On the objects of Hunter's life and the manner in which he accomplished them / by Henry T. Butlin.

  • Butlin, Henry T. (Henry Trentham), 1845-1912.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Hunterian oration for the year 1907 : being the sixty-third Hunterian oration since its foundation : delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons : On the objects of Hunter's life and the manner in which he accomplished them / by Henry T. Butlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    knew nor cared for the scientific side of liis profes- sion, still existed. And it will scarcely be credited tliat one of the surgeons of my own school, illus- trious at that time by the teaching and example of Sir James Paget, warned me not to devote too much attention to the study of pathology lest it should interfere with my prospects as a surgeon. Happily, during all those years the views of Hunter had never been lost sight of, and slowly fermented in the minds of the leaders of our profession until they found expression in the reform of medical education on lines which would have been ap- proved by Hunter. It no longer sufficed that the student should be told by the best educated of his teachers that the foundation of medicine and surgery is science. He must himself acquire suffi- cient scientific knowledge to enable him to practise his profession with safety and success. One by one scientific subjects bearing on the study of disease were introduced into the medical curriculum, until, some ninety years after Hunter's death, those sub- jects in which he most delighted, and which he regarded as the basis of sound surgery—anatomy, physiology, biology, and pathology—formed a neces- sary part of the education of every medical student. Not only in this country and throughout G-reater Britain is this the case, but it is the rule of all countries which are advanced in civilisation, and is carried so much farther in some of them that I am told that candidates for a degree in medicine in the