Mr. Hunter had been the first in this country to make the true use of anatomy; I mean in the sense that whilst it was no doubt the basis of our investigation into the functions or uses of parts, still it was only _one_ of an extensive series of inquiries. He had _examined_ the _dead_ with no purpose more earnestly, than to assist him in his endeavours to _observe the living_; examined _parts_, that he might better understand the whole. He had made himself familiar with the economy of animals, and generally with the habits of organized beings, whether animal or vegetable, that he might know their relations to each other, and that of the _whole_ to the phenomena, habits, and laws, of the _Human_ economy. As he neglected no source whence it had been customary to seek for information, so, notwithstanding his fondness for animals, he made various experiments on living creatures. But whilst these experiments afford additional proofs of the poverty, so to speak, of this plan of investigation, they impress on us the truth of Sir Charles Bell's assertion, that physiology is essentially a science of _observation_. We have only to place Mr. Hunter's _observations_ and _experiments_ here referred to, in juxtaposition, in order to bring out in high relief the great meaning and value of the one, and the unnecessary, or inconclusive, character of the other. He also examined the various facts presented to him in the _living_ body with unequalled patience and circumspection. Amongst others, he had paid particular attention to those which exemplify that vivid, that watchful connection which exists between various parts and organs, and by which impressions or sensations excited in any one part are telegraphed, as it were, with the swiftness of lightning to any or all of the organs of the body; facts which may be observed by _anybody_, by no one better, and by few so well, _as patients_ themselves. To take a common example: everybody is familiar with the fact that certain disturbances of the stomach produce pain or other annoyance in the head. Every one also knows that in such cases there is very often no pain, and sometimes no sensation of annoyance in the stomach; so that were it not from an innumerable succession of such conditions, in connection with particular influences on the stomach, we should, from the feeling of the _stomach only_, never dream of the cause being in that organ. Now on these simple facts hang not only the most practical of all John Hunter's observations, not only the most valuable of Mr. Abernethy's, but (as far as we can see) those relations through a philosophical examination of which we shall still most auspiciously seek to extend our practical knowledge of disease. We see here just that which Mr. Hunter had asserted—namely, "that the organ _secondarily_ affected (in this case, the head) sometimes appeared to suffer more than the organ to which the disturbance _had first_ been directed."