Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/20

 Harvey himself had called that individual 'anatomicorum coryphaeum' in 1649; and, in the very year and letter we are dealing with, he calls him 'celebrem anatomicum.' And Pecquet, the discoverer of the thoracic duct, in his work, also of this selfsame year 1651, the Experimenta Nova Anatomica, a work spoken of by Haller (Bihliotheca Anatomica, i. p. 443) as 'nobile opus et inter praecipua saeculi decora,' has the following remarkable passage : 'Ita sentiunt non vulgaris peritiae medici Harveius, Veslingius, Conringius, Bartholinus, aliique complures; nee melior ipse Joannes Riolanus (quod mirari subit pro eximia viri, qua in rebus anatomicis caeteros anteivit sagacitate). Audi hanc in rem illius sententiam.' p. 4, l. c. This, I think, I will spare you; but I will remark that, after this singular—or perhaps, alas! not singular—instance of the blundering judgments which contemporary writers may pass upon each other, no young man, nor indeed any old one—for Harvey was in his seventy-fifth year when he first read Pecquet's work (see Ep. Tert. p. 620, ed. 1766; p. 604, ed. Willis)—should overmuch