Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/66

discoveries held to the knowledge and the ignorance, not only of Walter Warner, but of all others of his contemporaries or predecessors. These words run thus (De Motu, p. 34, ed. 1766; p. 33, ed. Willis):-'Sed et hoc' (viz. the transmission of the blood by the action of the heart, from the veins into the arteries, through the ventricles of the heart into the whole body), 'omnes aliquo modo concedunt et ex cordis fabricâ et valvularum artificio positione et usu colligunt. Verum tanquam in loco obscuro titubantes caecutire videntur et varia subcontraria et non cohaerentia componunt et ex conjecturâ plurima pronunciant ut ante demonstratum est.' This may be translated thus:—'But it may be said, that all competent persons accept these views in a more or less modified form, and have been convinced of the truth of them from the structure of the heart, and the contrivance, position, and use of the valves. But they seem to me to make as little use of their eyes as men do who are stumbling about in a dark place, and their account of the matter is made up of heterogeneous, contradictory, and incompatible