June 6, 1878] 



NATURE 



147 



I have hitherto dwelt upon the claims to our honour 

 of Harvey the philosopher ; one word, in conclusion, 

 concerning Harvey the man. There have been great 

 men whose personality one would gladly forget : brilliant 

 capacities besmirched with the stains of inordinate am- 

 bition, or vanity, or avarice ; or soiled by worse vices ; 

 or men of one idea, unable to look beyond the circle of 

 their own pursuits. But no such flaw as any of these 

 defaces the fair fame of William Harvey. The most that 

 tradition has to say against him is, that he was quick of 

 temper and could say a sharp thing on occasion. I do 

 not feel disposed to cast a stone against him on that 

 ground ; but rather, such being the case, to marvel at 

 the astonishing, not only self-control, but sweetness, 

 displayed in his two short controversial writings — the 

 letters to Riolan ; a man who really was nothing better 

 than a tympanitic philistine, and who would have been 

 all the better for a few sharp incisions. 



Moreover, in such a temperament, while the love of 

 appreciation is keen, the sense of wrong at unjust and 

 wilful opposition is no less strong. But I do not recol- 

 lect, in all Harvey's writings, an allusion to the magni- 

 tude of his own achievements or an angry word against 

 his assailants. 



Ready to welcome honour if it came, but quite able to 

 be content without it ; caring little for anything but 

 liberty to follow in peace his search into the ways of the 

 unfathomable cause of things — " sive Deus, sive Natura 

 Naturans, sive Anima Mundi appelletur"^ — one fancies 

 this man of the true Stoic stamp would have summed up 

 his eighty years of good and evil in the line of the poet, 

 which Avas the favourite aphorism of his great contem- 

 porary, Descartes — 



" Bene qui latuit bene vixit." 

 But he lived too well that the memory of his life should 

 be allowed to fall into oblivion ; and we may hope that 

 recurring centennial anniversaries will find our succes- 

 sors still mindful of the root from whence their ever- 

 widening knowledge has sprung. 



After this Mr. Lowe replied in his usual racy style to 

 the toast of the Universities, naturally having a little 

 fling at the aspirations of Owens College and other recent 

 institutions. Mr. Lowe remarked that anything like 

 competition among the persons who conferred degrees 

 and honours must be productive of evil. The result of 

 such a system had been a kind of Dutch auction of 

 degrees and honours, there being in some quarters a 

 desire to secure as many students as possible by lowering 

 the standard of qualification ; but he was happy to think 

 that that evil was about to be remedied, and that they 

 were approaching a time Avhen they would obtain what 

 not only the medical profession, but every individual in 

 this country had a right to demand, namely, that no one 

 should be allowed to heave the lead into the depths of 

 his fellow creature's physical constitution without possess- 

 ing a certain proved degree of skill. That had been the 

 dream of all sound medical reformers for a long time. It 

 had hitherto remained only a dream, but as he had indi- 

 cated, it was about to be realised, and he was bound to 

 say that, as far as he understood the question, it was 

 about to be so mainly through the noble and disinterested 

 conduct of the universities, who, instead of displaying 

 selfishness, had expressed their readiness to surrender 

 the privilege they now enjoyed of admitting persons to 

 the medical profession, and to hand over this duty to a 

 certain body possessing the power of fixing a standard of 

 qualification below which no person whatever should be 

 admitted to practise. 



Mr. Gladstone, in responding to the toast of " General 

 Science and Literature," said — Great as had been their 

 profession in former times, every one must feel that it was 

 growing greater, wider, more solid from year to year and 

 from generation to generation. He did not speak now of 



' " Exerci'atlones de Generatione," Ex. 50. 



literary culture ; for although he felt that literature had 

 stood in a very important relation to the medical pro- 

 fession of late years, still literature was necessarily 

 fluctuating, and had been so in all periods of the world. 

 They had gone through a great literary age, as other 

 races had done before, and they could hardly expect 

 the succeeding generation to maintain the same literary 

 level. But as regarded science the case was very differ- 

 ent. Nothing here seemed to be required but that patient 

 labour which it was in the power of all men to bestow, 

 together with those large opportunities for observation 

 which we all enjoyed in some degree if we would but 

 use them, and which medical men perhaps enjoyed in 

 a greater degree than any other class of men. As society 

 was developed, as civilisation became more elaborate, 

 as the wants of men, as the enjoyments of men, and as, 

 perhaps, also the dangers of men multiplied, and as the 

 connection of body and mind, which was daily under 

 their eyes, became revealed, they would find their way 

 more and more into the very innermost chambers, so to 

 speak, of human nature. As science progressed their re- 

 sponsibilities would increase, but he was sure they would 

 never be wanting in that capacity and zeal which had ever 

 distinguished them, and that in proportion as their in- 

 fluence over human welfare and human happiness in- 

 creased, they would obtain that respect and gratitude 

 which, amid their imperfections, mankind were ever ready 

 to extend to their benefactors. 



OUR ASTRONOMICAL COLUMN 



The Transit of Mercury. — Unfavourable weather 

 appears to have very generally interfered with obser- 

 vations of the first contacts in the transit of May 6, 

 in this country, and in France a similar adverse state of 

 atmospheric conditions also prevailed. ' At Antwerp, 

 Christiania, Gottingen, Josephstadt (Vienna), Kiel, and 

 San Fernando (Cadiz), the contacts were observed and 

 the results have been mostly published in the Astrono- 

 mische Nachrichten. In two cases only is there any 

 distinction made between what has been called geometrical 

 contact, when Mercury appears perfectly round and his 

 outer Hmb in coincidence with the sun's limb, and the 

 instant when a fine filament of light is perceptible (or a 

 connecting ligament is broken) which more correctly 

 distinguishes the true internal contact. Thus at Kiel 

 the time was noted when the planet appeared round and 

 when the narrow luminous thread {detitlicher Lichtfaden) 

 appeared. But the most complete observations of the 

 first contacts hitherto printed are those made at the 

 Observatory of San Fernando, near Cadiz, which are 

 detailed in a circular issued on May 8, by Seiior Cecilio 

 Pujazon, the director of the establishment. Amongst the 

 observers were Sefiores Garrido and La Flor, who had 

 also experience in the case of the transit in November, 

 1 868, at the same observatory, and with the same or very 

 similar instruments, achromatics by Troughton and 

 Simms of 80 mm. aperture. Three of the observers 

 distinguish between what is termed " first internal con- 

 tact" and separation of the limbs {desprendimiento de 

 los limbos), the mean interval noted between the two 

 phases being 18 seconds. 



At Palermo the contacts were noted both with the 

 spectroscope and on the ordinary telescopic method. 

 Prof. Tacchini communicated the particulars to the Paris 

 Academy of Sciences on May 20, at the same time stating 

 that he had been informed of the ill-success attending the 

 observation of the transit at Naples, Florence, Venice, 

 Gallarate (Baron Dembowski' s observatory), Genoa, and 

 Modena, on account of unfavourable skies. 



In the United States the phenomenon appears to have 

 excited a very unusual degree of interest, occasioned, no 

 doubt, by the instructions for observing it widely- 

 circulated by the authorities of the Naval Observatory, 



