Page:Restorative medicine - an Harveian annual oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on June 21, 1871 (the 210th anniversary) (IA restorativemedic00cham).pdf/15

 FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN OF HARVEY!

I KNOW I shall be carrying out in spirit the in- tention of this oration's founder, when I ask you to join me to-day in reviewing the contemporary progress of therapeutics. While science is our privilege, art is our duty, and quite as much as science is capable of advance by that method of direct experiment, to advocate which Harvey bids me stand here. Now is a fitting time to take such a review diligently and often, for I am sure that this our art of healing is passing through a most trying crisis, which will decide the direction and pace of its onward march in a most sovereign manner.

Let our motto be "Vigilemus," or we shall stumble and block the road.

This crisis I have elsewhere described by say- ing that medicine is now entering upon a biological phase. By this I mean that our pra ice is be- coming yearly more and more influenced by that idea of Disease which paints it as a mode of living,