Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/36

 inventions and applications of the modern physio- logist which we conceive that Harvey would have especially delighted in, as giving confirmation to many views which he held, and explaining much that necessarily was beyond even his powers of solution. The sphygmograph affords us the rationale of those differences of the pulse which the practised physician has long recognised; and though not suited, at least in its present form, for ordinary bedside practice, has already, in the hands of experienced observers, thrown muchi light on the changes which the heart and vessels are subjected to in the varying phases of disease. As it has already given precision to our physio- logical doctrines on the action of the heart, the condition of the arteries, and the balance of the circulation, we may hope that it will aid us still further in determining the action of many sub- stances which affect the circulating apparatus and the blood, concerning which the medical mind is still in a painful state of dubiety.

In connexion with this subject, I am confident that I re-echo the feelings of every member of this ancient Corporation if I dwell upon the loss which the College has sustained, since the last Harveian oration was delivered, by the decease of a man whom we may justly designate as a genuine follower of our great medical prototype, and who showed by his work that he also "avowed himself