“In all these characters of Hunter’s works we see that which was the dominant character of his mind—massiveness and grandeur of design were indicated in all to which he applied himself. And in perfect harmony with this was the simplicity of his ordinary method of work. It consisted mainly in the orderly accumulation of facts from every source, of every kind, and building them up in the simplest inductions. If he had been an architect, he would have built huge pyramids, and every stone would have borne its own inscription. He knew nothing of logic or the science of thought. He used his mental power as with a natural instinct. He worked with all his might, but without art. I know no instance so striking as in him of the living force which there is in facts when they are stored in a thoughtful mind. “But Hunter was not only a great observer, he was a very acute one. I think it would be difficult to find in all the masses of facts which he has recorded any one which was either observed or recorded erroneously. If there are errors in his works, they are the errors of reasoning, not of observation. And it may be noted, as a singular example of his accuracy, that when he tells his inferences it is generally with expressions implying that he regarded them as only probable: a fact he tells without conditions; when he generalises, it is with ‘I suspect,’ ‘I believe,’ ‘I am disposed to think,’ or the like.... He seems to have thought he had never reached farther than the nearest approach to truth, which was at that time attainable, and that a year or more of investigation would bring him nearer to the truth, and then that which now seemed right would be surpassed or set aside. He used to say to his pupils in his lectures, ‘Do not take notes of this; I daresay I shall change it all next year.’” Abernethy, who knew him well, says: “It is scarcely credible with what pains Mr. Hunter examined the lower kinds of animals,” and he quotes Mr. Clift as saying that “he would stand for hours motionless as a statue, except that with a pair of forceps in either hand he was picking asunder the connecting fibres of some structure” that he was examining: ... “patient and watchful as a prophet, sure that the truth would come: it might be in the unveiling of some new structure, or in the clearing up of some mental cloud; or it might be as in a flash, in which, as with inspiration, intellectual darkness becomes light.” FOOTNOTES: [12] Author of the defamatory so-called Life of John Hunter, 1794. [13] “Life of John Hunter,” by Drewry Ottley, 1835. [14] Life of John Hunter, prefixed to the treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, &c. [15] _Medical Times and Gazette_, March 3, 1877. [16] _Medical Times and Gazette_, Feb. 17, 1877. CHAPTER VI. _EDWARD JENNER AND VACCINATION._