Page:Introductory lecture delivered at the Middlesex Hospital, October 1st, 1877 (IA b22447258).pdf/10

10 that our microscopes would be useless in the search. To take an illustration which more nearly concerns us to day. Addison, in 1842, saw the corpuscles which float in our blood pass through the walls of the smaller blood-vessels, a scientific fact of no moment, apparently, and almost forgotten, when Cohnheim confirmed the observation; yet the pathology most popular at the present time mainly rests on the now well-known migratory powers of the so-called "wandering cells."

But I might weary you with illustrations, all tending to show how the purely scientific worker has often supplied the material which, later on, others have utilised.

Great discoveries are not made at a leap; they follow slowly after years of patient labour.

It has been truly said by a great living Philosopher "All great things come slowly to the birth."

Copernicus is said to have been for thirty-three years elaborating his great work on the solar system; Newton for twenty years pondered over the laws of gravitation; Harvey for twenty-six years laboured to mature his views on the circulation; and for more than twenty years Darwin was unfolding the difficult problem discussed in 'The Origin of Species.'

I am not to-day going to weary you with a long survey of the subjects you will have to take in hand. Medical education is "cut and dried," and we must deal with it as it is. I would rather offer you, as