Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/19

 future lectures. The writing throughout appears to have suffered little or nothing in distinctness, except that of the title-page; but in evidence of the style and the difficulty of putting it into a modern form, I venture to send round an autotype copy of one of the most legible passages, which happens to be the résumé of what Harvey taught in his early lectures regarding the heart and circu- lation.

The title-page, which is in red ink, is very nearly illegible. It is to the following effect : "Prælectiones anatomiæ universalis, per me Guglielmum Harveium Londinensem, anatom. et chirurg. Professorem. Anno Dom. 1616. Anno ætatis 37. Prælect. April 1st, 1617." Under- neath are the numbers 16, 17, 18, which probably imply that these particular notes were used for the lectures of 1616, 1617, and 1618.

The manuscript evidently consists of mere memoranda ; jottings of the subject upon which the speaker could dilate as he chose. Each full page consists of about thirty lines, and but few of the words are written out in full. The abbreviations, which sometimes assume an almost hieroglyphic form, are very numerous; and as the terminations of the words are commonly mere up-and-down strokes, a considerable latitude must necessarily be allowed to the transcriber. Under these circumstances, and from the impossibility of inter-