Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/16

 phenomena he arrived at the conclusions set forth in 1628, having undertaken a task which at the outset he regarded "as so full of difficulties that he was almost tempted to think with Fracastorius that the motion of the heart was only to be comprehended by God." It will be interesting to the Fellows of this College, no less than to the world of science at large, to know that we now have it in our power to estimate more accurately the gradual advances by which Harvey eventually arrived at his goal, inasmuch as the original notes of the first lectures which he delivered in this College in 1616 and in subsequent years, as Lumleian Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology, have been recently rediscovered in the British Museum. Harvey tells us in the introductory letter to his " very dear friend Dr. Argent, the excellent and accomplished President of the Col- lege of Physicians, prefixed to his work De Motu Sanguinis, published in 1628, that he had for nine years and more confirmed his views by mul- tiplied demonstrations." Hence the first date of the new doctrine is ordinarily fixed in 1619; but the manuscript lectures show that Harvey delivered his first lectures in 1616, and was then already on the threshold of the complete discovery. These lectures formed a part of the library of Sir Hans Sloane, which was purchased by Government in 1754, and, though entered in the Catalogue of