The complete works of John Hunter, F.R.S (Volume 2).

  • Hunter, John, 1728-1793.
Date:
1841
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The complete works of John Hunter, F.R.S (Volume 2). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    department than of those more important branches of the art, in which are involved the knowledge and treatment of diseases which stand in immediate connexion with vital organs and functions. It is not uninteresting, even in this work, to trace the peculiarities of his genius, and to watch the workings of his mind in his search after truth, which he pursued with an ingenuousness and candour which have never been surpassed, and rarely, if ever, equalled. It is, indeed, amongst the remarkable characteristics of his reasonings and conclusions,—and this must be the case, too, with all who follow truth with equal zeal and singleness of purpose,—that even his errors arise from that inviolable love of truth, that single aim at establishing, not the dogmas of a favourite theory, but the simple laws of Nature herself, which constitutes one principal charm of his greatest and most important discoveries. This is shown in a very striking point of view by the error, and even inconsistency into which he falls when reasoning on the structure of the teeth. His observations and experiments had shown him that these organs differ in many important respects from the other bones: that the phenomena which these two organs present under comparative circumstances, whether of disease or of experiment, differ in many important respects ; that the teeth are not susceptible of artificial injection; that they cannot restore lost parts ; and many other peculiarities, which led him too hastily to infer that they are to be considered as extraneous bodies with respect to a circulation through their substance, though the same candour obliges him to confess, in the same sentence, that they have most certainly a living principle, by means of which they make part of the body, and are capable of uniting with any part of a living body, although the experiments on which he founds the latter proposition, if they prove anything, prove that this union with a living body is effected by means of a vascular continuity. Here, then, is an example of a love of truth for her own sake, so pure, so invulnerable, that not even to avoid the dilemma into which his imperfect reasoning upon these two inconsistent propositions must necessarily force him, will he sacrifice, or modify, or gloss over one tittle of the facts on which they are founded. Whatever errors, however, may have crept into this work from the causes already alluded to, it forms the basis of all that has since been done to improve the knowledge of this branch of practice, and still more remarkably has it proved the foundation of all that is now known on the physiology of the teeth. It must, on the