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/34

RESTORATIVE MEDICINE. weight," as the son of Sirach advises all material things to be estimated. Do not think of the pulse-portrait-painter, even as at present perfected, as a mere physiological toy. Had it done no other good deed, eternal gratitude would be its due for putting down the tyrannical imposture of the tactus eruditus : for no one has vaunted such erudition from the time it could be tested in black and white. But I think a sphygmograph can do more than that; it can tell us what really existing movements to feel for in the pulse. The tool may sharpen the wits that use it, and teach its pupils in the end to dispense with its services.

Since Harvey, the physiology of the sanguineous circulation has been pushed on by many distinguished men, but I do not know of any step more important than that made during the last two years by the French savants, Messrs. Legros and Onimus. By an elaborate series of experiments they have deciphered the riddle which has puzzled Harvey and Hunter, Magendie and Claude Bernard-how the microscopic arteries assist the current of the blood through the capillaries. Indeed it puzzled the last-named physiologist so much, that he definitely confined the agency of the arterioles to resisting the force of the heart. To