Before an anatomical amphitheatre was opened in Lima in the year 1792, the study of the healing art continued to be much neglected, as we are informed by the founder of this school, who, after some statements on this important subject,[14] observes, that the public instruction of medicine being wanting in the royal seminary, and having no colleges that might supply this deficiency, it followed as a consequence that in the medical profession those improvements had not been made that the importance of the art demanded,—a great detriment to the public health. Some years after the anatomical amphitheatre, or practical school of anatomy, was formed, its founder was raised to the head of the medical profession in Peru; and, desirous to advance medical science among his countrymen, he had further prevailed with the viceregal government to establish a college of medicine and surgery in Lima as an independent medical seminary, dedicated to San Fernando, in honour of their august sovereign Ferdinand VII. of Spain.[15] This college, as we are informed by one of its earliest inmates, was established in the year 1809, and in it different professorships were properly assigned. Here there was a professor of chemistry, but, for want of suitable apparatus, he had not yet opened an experimental course; a professor of botany, who really gave some practical lessons when walking out with his pupils in the neighbouring “_potreros_” or grazing parks. There were also professors of the practice of medicine and surgery, &c. all on a goodly plan, after the manner of European colleges. But, while these improvements were going on, the revolution came, to do evil that good might come; and then all the fair hopes from the college of San Fernando were nipped in the bud. This seminary, which, at present, metaphorically represents the tree of knowledge, stripped of its green leaves and fair promise, under the shade of the wide-spreading tree of liberty, on which it is to be hoped that science ere long may be grafted, is, in its now blighted condition, under the nominal rectorship of Doctor Don Caietano Heredia, one of the earliest and most illustrious of the disciples educated in this school,—a gentleman who, to his infinite praise, caught no small portion of that love of knowledge, and desire to disseminate it, which so eminently distinguished the eloquent founder, Don Hipolito Unanue.