Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/15

 of the many attempts to rob Harvey of his rightful rank in the noble army of discoverers, which were made in the latter half of the seventeenth century.

Some of the last, if not the very last, of the many fruitful experiments which Harvey performed in the way of interrogating Nature as to the circulation, were experiments in the way of injection. If the writer of a work which appeared but some forty-three years ago, On the Diseases and Injuries of Arteries, had taken the pains to repeat those experiments which Harvey performed more than two hundred and twenty years ago, and when in his seventy-fourth year, we should not have had the following statement at page 9 of his book : 'I have conceived that the arteries contain air in an uncombined state, which may assist in keeping them distended, and in facilitating the circulation; but I have not