762 THE HARVEIAN ORATION. 



have been answered till the * works and days ' of Bernard ^ ; and in 

 the cases of several other problems instanced by himself (p. 132, 

 * Epistola Secunda ad Riolanum '), and hidden then, to use his own 

 metaphor (p. 630, ed. 1766; p. 613, ed. Willis, * Epistola Prima ad 

 Horstium'), in the well of Democritus. 



For the culture which Harvey had bestowed upon his literary 

 faculties we have better evidence than Aubrey's, better even than 

 that of two more trustworthy witnesses than Aubrey — Bishop 

 Pearson, to wit, and Sir William Temple : we have the evidence of 

 his own writings as to his familiarity with one of the greatest 

 writers of antiquity. Bishop Pearson, as Dr. George Paget has 

 reminded us (see p. 15 of his 'Notice of an Unpublished Manuscript 

 of Harvey,' 1850), writing in 1664, but seven years after Harvey's 

 death, and Aubrey (see p. Ixxxii of ' Life,' by Dr. Willis, prefixed to 

 the Sydenham Society's edition of his works, 1847), have told us 

 of Harvey's high appreciation of Aristotle's writings ; but in his 

 own writings he refers to the Stagirite more frequently, I think, 

 than to any other individual. And, as regards Vergil (the Latin 

 author whom probably, if but one Latin classical writer could be 

 saved from destruction, most men would choose to be that one, as 

 Aristotle probably would be the similarly to be chosen Greek), Sir 

 William Temple {'Miscellanies,' Part ii, On Poetry, p. 314) has told 

 us that 'the famous Dr. Harvey, when he was reading Virgil, 

 would sometimes throw him down upon the table and say he had a 



* I refer to Claude Bernard's experiments on the influence of vitiated air (*Des 

 Effets des Substances Toxiques et medicamenteuses,' 1857, p. 125), which show so 

 plainly that organisms can attain a power of tolerance as against morbific agencies if 

 time is allowed them to become gradually adjusted to such environment. The prin- 

 ciple demonstrated in these experiments has been brought into greater prominence by 

 Sir James Paget in his striking account ('Lancet,' June 3, 187 1, p. 734), so inter- 

 esting to all of us for other than purely scientific reasons, of his serious illness in 187 1. 

 As regards the * Problem of Harvey,' the foetus in utero has been habituated to lowly 

 arterialised blood; the blood of the umbilical vein is not scarlet in colour, and hence, 

 I submit, may be explained the tolerance by a child which has come into the world 

 but has not yet breathed in it, of conditions which entail death by suffocation in a 

 child which, having breathed air, is exposed to them. This physiological principle 

 has, among many other practical bearings, the practical value of furnishing an answer 

 to the Philistine argument so often brought forward by Antisanitarians in favour of 

 the retention of abuses, in the words ' See to what a good old age people live in the 

 middle of it all ! ' The answer is, ' They have become habituated, and are living in 

 spite of, not because of these surroundings : immigrants die in the process of acclima- 

 tisation.' Such persons, and indeed all persons, may read with profit Mr. G. H. 

 Lewes' 'Physiology of Common Life,' vol. i. pp. 372-377, upon this subject. 



