[846] ‘I had rather not be cramped and hampered by attempting what abler heads than mine have failed to achieve, and what, in truth, I believe, in the present state of our science, to be impossible, a complete methodical system of nosology.’ Watson's Principles and Practice of Physic, London, 1857, vol. i. p. 9. This is the wisdom of a powerful understanding.
[847] ‘Now, when the diseases of Cullen's nosology have been almost doubled, and the facts relating to them have been more than doubled.’ Williams' Principles of Medicine, London, 1848, p. 522.
[848] I had intended giving some account of the once celebrated Brunonian system, which was founded by Dr. John Brown, who was first the pupil of Cullen, and afterwards his rival. But a careful perusal of his works has convinced me that the real basis of his doctrine, or the point from which he started, was not pathology, but therapeutics. His hasty division of all diseases into sthenic and asthenic, has no claim to be deemed a scientific generalization, but was a mere artificial arrangement, resulting from a desire to substitute a stimulating treatment in the place of the old lowering one. He, no doubt, went to the opposite extreme; but that being a purely practical subject, this Introduction has no concern with it. For the same reason, I omit all mention of Currie, who, though an eminent therapeutician, was a commonplace pathologist. That so poor and thinly-peopled a country as Scotland, should, in so short a period, have produced so many remarkable men, is extremely curious.
[849] Mr. Ottley (Life of Hunter, p. 186) says, ‘In his writings we occasionally find an obscurity in the expression of his thoughts, a want of logical accuracy in his reasonings, and an incorrectness in his language, resulting from a deficient education.’ But, a deficient education will never make a man obscure. Neither will a good education make him lucid. The only cause of clearness of expression is clearness of thought; and clearness of thought is a natural gift, which the most finished and systematic culture can but slightly improve. Uneducated men, without a thousandth part of John Hunter's intellect, are often clear enough. On the other hand, it as frequently happens that men, who have received an excellent education, cannot speak or write ten consecutive sentences which do not contain some troublesome ambiguity. In Hunter's works such ambiguities are abundant; and this is probably one of the reasons why no one has yet given a connected view of his philosophy. On his obscurity, compare Cooper's Life of Sir Astley Cooper, London, 1843, vol. i. pp. 151, 152; Paget's Lectures on Surgical Pathology, London, 1853, vol. i. p. 419; and the remarks of his enemy, Foot, in Foot's Life of Hunter, London, 1794, p. 59.
[850] He was born in 1728, and came to London in 1748. Adams' Life of John Hunter, 2nd edit. London, 1818, pp. 20, 203. According to Adams (pp. 30–35), he was abroad as surgeon in the English army from 1761 to 1763; though, in Foot's Life of Hunter, London, 1794, p. 78, he is said to have returned to England in 1762. Mr. Ottley says that he returned in 1763. Ottley's Life of Hunter, p. 22, in vol. i. of Hunter's Works, edited by Palmer, London, 1835.
[851] See Buckle's History of Civilization, vol. ii. pp. 374, 375.
[852] ‘He followed his natural inclination. He preferred the more delusive, apparently the more direct, road, which has seduced so many philosophers. He sought to arrive at the general laws of nature at once by conjecture: rather than, by a close and detailed study of her inferior operations, to ascend, step by step, through a slow and gradual induction to those laws which govern her general procedure.’ Babington's Preface to Hunter's Treatise on the Venereal Disease, in Hunter's Works, vol. ii. p. 129. Compare the narrow and carping criticism in Foot's Life of Hunter, p. 163.
[853] That I may not be suspected of exaggeration, I will quote what by far the greatest of all the historians of medicine has said upon this subject. ‘La majorité des médecins qui prétendaient s'être formés d'après Bâcon, n'avaient hérité de lui qu'une répugnance invincible pour les hypothèses et les systèmes, une grande vénération pour l'expérience, et un désir extrême de multiplier le nombre des observations. Ce fut chez les Anglais que la méthode empirique en médecine trouva le plus de partisans, et c'est principalement aussi chez eux qu'elle s'est répandue jusqu'aux temps les plus rapprochés de nous. Sa propagation y fut favorisée, non-seulement par le profond respect que les Anglais continuent toujours de porter à l'immortel chancelier, mais encore par la haute importance que la nation entière attache au sens commun, common sense, et elle y demeura l'ennemie irréconciliable de tous les systèmes que ne reposent pas sur l'observation.’ Sprengel, Histoire de la Médecine, vol. v. p. 411, Paris, 1815.
[854] Clive says, ‘Much as Mr. Hunter did, he thought still more. He has often told me, his delight was, to think.’ Abernethy's Hunterian Oration, London, 1819, p. 26.
[855] Mr. Owen, in his interesting Preface to the fourth volume of Hunter's Works, says (p. vii.), ‘There is proof that Hunter anatomized at least five hundred different species of animals, exclusive of repeated dissections of different individuals of the same species, besides the dissections of plants to a considerable amount.’