Page:The Harveian Oration,1902.djvu/15

 reader matter upon all these topics which shall be worthy of the gravest consideration."

Harvey's speculations on these and kindred subjects, if his "Medical Observations" had come down to us, would have been of exceptional interest, though we cannot doubt that in the light of modern research they would have appeared but inchoate, as our own will doubtless so seem to those who come as many years after us as we are from Harvey. For the language of the physiologist is but a reflex of the state of knowledge of his day, and his explanations do not transcend those of the sciences on which his own is based. In his exposition of vital phenomena, Harvey shows himself still trammelled, and unable altogether to emancipate himself from the notions of Aristotle and Galen. He speaks, like Galen, of the heart as being an " elaboratory, fountain and perennial focus of heat " (second epistle to Riolan):—not, however, in virtue of its proper substance, but because of its contained blood. Though he scouts the idea of the calidum innatum as transcending the qualities inherent