Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/18

ie dedicated to them, “This book alone declares the blood to course and revolve by a new route” and equally when, in his old age, he says with allowable self-complacency, "The admirable circulation of the blood originally discovered by me, I have lived to see admitted by almost all.” Harvey, fancying himself a discoverer, and all the great anatomists and physiologists of Europe sharing his belief, would he a delusion for which, with all our experience of human credulity, we are scarcely prepared

To understand Harvey and his work aright, to appreciate thoroughly what he did, to form a just estimate of the ability with which he exposed fallacious arguments, his acuteness of observation and corresponding clearness of description, the ingenuity with which he devised experiments, and his skill in performing them, we must study not only his great work, the "Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis,” but also his anatomical disquisitions addressed to Riolan of Paris, and his letters to Hofmann, Siegel, Nardi, and others. Having, as in duty bound, and in accordance with the plan I had sketched out for myself, read these productions with care and atten-