The Hunterian Oration on HUNTER'S IDEAL AND LISTER'S PRACTICE
Authors: B. Moynihan
Journal: BMJ (1927)

ON this day, the 199th anni-versary of his birth, we con- memiiorate the services of John Huntfer to the science and the art of surgery.In this year we celebrate the centenary of the birth of Lister.Hunter and Lister.From all who lhave ever served the cause of surgery these two stalid apa.ct bv reason of the immeasurable gifts which they have coni- ferred upon their fellow-men.May we to-day recall some- tlhilng of Hunter's work anid of his ideals in respect of the coniquest of disease, which the genius of Lister made possible!Mani's life is warfare.The individual, the whole -race, is beset by foes-unresting, relentless.Against them our defence, if we are ever to suibdue thenm, must be carefullyplanned, and diligently strengthened.But defenlce, liowever stubborn, is not enough.Attacks designed after scientific study of the enemy strongholds and methods, and launched wi-ithi impassioned zeal, must never for one instant falter.Not all our attacks meet w-ith success.We arie clieer"d wheon w-e gain some notable victory, yet when we su1ffor defeat, as wave after wave of our acdvance is clhecked and repulsed, we do not lose heart.Failure inispir'es us to fresh and still more eager endeavour.In this year, the centenary of Lister, we rejoice to acclaimiithe greatest victory ever won by man against his enemies.We who are in active w-ork to-day are perlhaps ulnable to measure the full extent of that victory; for duinllg the logn figlit, lasttfig almost exactly sixty--year's, oin standards have been so clanged that we cannot truth- fully compare olir work with that of our intellectual ancestors.Operations from tinme immemorial so mortal as to be prohibitive are now freely performed without anxiety.Operations formerly-unimaginable are now matters of e-veryday occurrence.The.mere tale of such work doine does not adequately illustrate the change.On my last day as sllgeon on the full staff of my hospital r performed six abdominal operations.Not one of these was practised by.aniy member of our staff during the year in which I became house-surgeon, nor had such a diagnosis as was made in three of these cases, and verified at the time-of operation, ever then been attempted in the history of medicine.Above all, a statement of facts and a comparison of methods does not in adequate degree convey to our- miinds the difference -of -outlook, of the intellectual and spiritual approach of a man to his daily task, as between thie surgeon in the days before Lister and since.It is barely possible for us to imagine how men felt about their daily work when an eminent surgeon could speak of his hospital as a " house of death "; when hospitals "were little short of pest-houses," as Lister said-; and when the opl)pressive mortality compelled the closure of wards or of a w-hole hospital for montlis, unmtil the curse was hfted fromii tlhem.TIhe change, of incalculable benefit to humanity, is due -to onie mnan-Lister.2Before Lister's time the surgeon dreaded the alnmost inevitable consequences of his operation.Lister made surgery so free from risk that we now may say that; with due care in the detailed application of the lessons lear-nt from him, it is no longer the fatality of the opera- tioIn itself which is feared.In these days, when a patient dies it is not because the operation leads to septic com- plications which he cannot withstand.We fear for him chiefly, if not only, whlen thIe extenit of the oper'ation is formidable, or; when the most senisitive regions of the body, sometimes remote and almost iniaccessible, are