Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/52

some of the leading changes in the circulation brought about by causes bodily and mental, he says: —“Such a flood of light and truth breaks in upon me here; occasion offers of explaining so many problems, of resolving so many doubts, of discovering the causes of so many slighter and more serious diseases, and for suggesting remedies for their cure, that the subject seems almost to demand a separate treatise.” These were no idle words; for in his work on generation, where we should scarcely expect to meet with such statements, Harvey says, “I have occasionally, and against all expectation, completely cured enormous sarcoceles, by the simple means of dividing or tying the little artery that supplied them, and so preventing all access of nourishment. . . to the part affected; by which it came to pass that the tumour on the verge of mortification, was afterwards easily extirpated with the knife or the searing-iron.” And then Harvey gives us a case of a fatty tumour of the scrotum, larger than a man’s head, and hanging as low as the knees, which he succeeded in removing without sacrificing the important organs involved in it. This case was but one of many accomplished in opposition to vulgar opinion, and