THE HARVEIAN ORATION. 733 



sentiiint non vulgaris peritiae medici Harveius, Veslingius, Con- 

 ringius, Bartholinus, aliique complures; nee melior ipse Joannes 

 Riolanus (quod mirari subit pro eximia viri, qua in rebus anatomicis 

 caeteros anteivit, sagacitate). Audi banc in rem illius sententiam.* 

 p. 4, 1. c. This, I think, I will spare you ; but I will remark that, 

 after this singular — or perhaps, alas ! not singular — instance of the 

 blundering judgments which contemporary writers may pass upon 

 each other, no young man, nor indeed any old one — for Harvey 

 was in his seventy-fifth year when he first read Pecquet's work (see 

 'Ep. Tert.' p. 620, ed. 1766 ; p. 604, ed. Willis) — should overmuch 

 fret if his own age, in his own estimation, do him scanty justice. 

 Posterity ordinarily — I do not say always — rectifies these false 

 judgments; it has done so, at all events, in the cases of the men so 

 grotesquely grouped together by Pecquet^. Haller, for example, 

 writing in 1774 (' Bibliotheca Anatomica/ i. p. 301), speaks of 

 E-iolanus as 'vir asper et in nuperos suosque coaevos immitis ac 

 nemini parcens, nimis avidus suarum laudum praeco, et se ipso 

 fatente anatomicorum princeps.' The duty of attacking and abolish- 

 ing such a man may, or indeed must, have been a disagreeable one 

 to his contemporaries. They appear to have shirked it : it was 

 their duty to have faced it, notwithstanding it might have been 

 disagreeable. 



Harvey used for these experiments a somewhat rough injecting 

 apparatus, 'quemadmodum in clysteribus injiciendis fieri solet' 

 (p. 614, ed. 1766; p. 597, ed. Willis). The modern experiment 

 which I wish first to introduce to your attention rests for its 

 accomplishment upon the employment of the delicate injection- 

 syringe (for Hmstichung) of Ludwig, and of the fine soluble Berlin 

 blue for the substance to be injected. Here, as in many other 

 instances, our superiority to our forefathers rests mainly or wholly 

 upon our possession of more delicate, or upon our command of more 

 powerful agents; and the delicate syringe and the penetrating 

 soluble injection-mass help us to discoveries and demonstrations 

 impossible in default of such means ; just as the superior lenses of 

 Malpighi and Leeuwenhoeck helped them to the discovery and 



1 See also, I would add, Gregorius Horst, the father of Harvey's correspondent of 

 the same name, in his ' Opera Medica,' i. p. 83 (1661), where Riolanus is spoken of as 

 * anatomicorum hujus saeculi fere primum ;' and consult Bartholinus himself, who, in 

 his work 'De Lacteis Dubia ' (1654), refers to 'multis Riolani observationibus quibus 

 rem anatomicam immortal! nominis celebritate auxit.' 



