In 1796, William Blizard, surgeon to the London Hospital and earnest Anglican, introduced one of his pamphlets with a revealing text. He chose a passage by William Blackstone, the eminent legal commentator, Member of Parliament, and judge.

Blizard went on to discuss the topic at hand – the importance of assistant surgeons in hospitals – as an application of this teleological principle. His essay resonated with the analogies he evoked with Blackstone's statement: hospitals were like “all Bodies politic,” like “Natural Bodies,” like God's creation. Inspired founders had shared God's vital spark, infusing their work with an all-encompassing Design. Blizard implicitly played out the rest of the analogy. Just as humans had to figure out God's Design to understand nature, hospital governors needed to grasp the founders' Design to carry out their “General Duties.” Unfortunately, like corrupted churchmen, governors tended to forget “all the great objects they comprehend” and to fail to “appreciate their own true, high relation to the public.” Blizard hastened to remind them that they were responsible “for their conduct to science, to humanity, to all mankind.”

This was rather heavy-handed rhetoric for introducing an argument that the surgeons of the London Hospital needed help with their charitable duties, but Blizard was not one to resist a high moral tone when he held a pen.