SIR,-A recent review in your columns (Journal, March 9, p. 390) over the initials of the distinguished occupant of the Oxford chair of anatomy embodies certain statements which require correction lest a false and incomplete definition of the true" Hunterian method" gain wider acceptance under the weight of such an authority. Your reviewerproceeds from a trenchant criticism of a recent monograph upon thepineal organ, allegedly based upon the" so-called Hunterianmethod," to a somewhat devastating but unwarrantable condemnation of that method, which is deemed imperfect, fallacious, and outworn, and now superseded in utility by the modern (presumably infallible) experimental method. Here Homer nods. It is clear from the context that your reviewer identifies the Hunterian method with the comparative approach exclusively, an identification of the whole with the part which is not only gravely misleading but also distinctly ungenerous to thegenius of Hunter and to his memory. True, the comparative method remained always a well-plied and singularly productive tool in Hunter's hands, but it by no means constituted the whole of his scientific armamentarium in his sustained attack upon the problems of generation, growth, repair, and disease. Clinical observa-tion, pathology, and, above all, experimentation were also part of his equipment. Indeed, the experimental method was as dear to the heart of Hunter as to that of his present critic." Don't think-try the experiment," wrote he to Jennersurely an immortal phrase in the annals of our country's biological history.

It isscarcely necessary to instance in evidence the numerous and long-continued series of experiments which engaged the indefatigable Hunter the best part of his lifetime-for example, the lead-shot and madder experiments on bone growth, the pioneer work on the grafting of transplanted tissues, the experimental demonstration of the effect of air upon the pulmonary blood, the various experimental inquiries into digestive processes, the phenomena of blood-clotting, and the embryology of the chick. Indeed, had the knowledge gained by that remarkable English school (comprising Boyle, Hooke, Lower, and Mayou) which finished a century earlier not been forgotten, Hunter might well have spared himself