4 THE HAllVEIAN ORATION, 1894. 



tion and distribution of nourishment through the body, the 

 mixing of blood from various parts, the maintenance and distri- 

 bution of animal heat, and excretion through the kidneys. How 

 far he developed it in the direction of pathology and therapeu- 

 tics we do not know, as the results of his labours on these sub- 

 jects have, unfortunately, been lost to us by the destruction of 

 his manuscripts during the Civil War. 



We are proud to reckon Harvey as an Englishman by birth, 

 but he is far too great to belong exclusively to any country ; 

 men of various nations, and scattered all over the face of the 

 earth, acknowledge him as their teacher, and have played, or 

 are playing, a part in developing his discovery in its various 

 branches of physiology, pathology, pharmacology, semeiology, and 

 therapeutics. Americans, Austrians, Danes, Dutchmen, French, 

 Germans, Italians, Norwegians, Eussians and Swedes have all 

 shared in the work, and so numerous are they that it would be 

 impossible for me to name them all. Stephen Hales, however, 

 deserves special mention, for he was the first to measure the 

 ^pressure of blood in the arteries, and the resistance oft'ered to 

 the circulation of the blood by the capillaries was investigated 

 : by Thomas Young, a Fellow of this College, who ranks with 

 Harvey, Newton, and Darwin as one of the greatest scientific 

 men that England has ever produced, and whose undulatory 

 theory has been as fertile of results in physics as Harvey's idea 

 of circulation has been in physiology and medicine. 



Harvey's desire that those who had done good work should 

 not be forgotten was founded upon his knowledge of mankind, 

 and of the tendency there is to forget what has already been 

 done by those who have gone before us. The opposite condi- 

 tion often prevails, and the past is glorified at the expense of 

 the present. But sometimes the present is wrongly glorified at 

 the expense of the past, and past work or past benefits are for- 

 gotten. 



Good examples of this are afforded by physiological views 

 regarding the action of the vena cava and pulmonary veins and 

 the causation of the cardiac sounds. Harvey appears to have 

 thought that the vena cava and pulmonary veins were simply 

 dilated passively by the passage of blood into them : but the 



