st simple
readings of the facts as he had written them, the diffident teacher
seldom raising his eyes from his manuscript and rarely stopping
until his complete lecture had been read through. His lectures were,
therefore, instructive rather than interesting, as he used infinite care
in preparing them; but appearing before his classes was so dreaded by
him that he is said to have been in the habit of taking a half-drachm of
laudanum before each lecture to nerve him for the ordeal. One is led to
wonder by what name he shall designate that quality of mind that renders
a bold and fearless surgeon like Hunter, who is undaunted in the face
of hazardous and dangerous operations, a stumbling, halting, and
"frightened" speaker before a little band of, at most, thirty young
medical students. And yet this same thing is not unfrequently seen among
the boldest surgeons.

Hunter's Operation for the Cure of Aneurisms

It should be an object-lesson to those who, ignorantly or otherwise,
preach against the painless vivisection as practised to-day, that by the
sacrifice of a single deer in the cause of science Hunter discovered a
fact in physiology that has been the means of saving thousands of human
lives and thousands of human bodies from needless mutilation. We refer
to the discovery of the "collateral circulation" of the blood,
which led, among other things, to Hunter's successful operation upon
aneurisms.

Simply stated, every organ or muscle of the body is supplied by one
large artery, whose main trunk distributes the blood into its lesser
branches, and thence through the capillaries. Cutting off this main
artery, it would seem, should cut off entirely the blood-supply to the
particular organ which is supplied by this vessel; and until the time of
Hunter's demonstration this belief was held by most physiologists. But
nature has made a provision for this possible stoppage of blood-supply
from a single source, and has so arranged that some of the small
arterial branches coming from the main supply-trunk are connected with
other arterial branches coming from some other supply-trunk. Under
normal conditions the main arterial trunks supply their respective
organs, the little connecting arterioles playing an insignificant part.
But let the main supply-trunk be cut off or stopped for whatever reason,
and a remarkable thing takes place. The little connecting branches
begin at once to enlarge and draw blood from the neighboring uninjur