Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/38

 aneurism, and with sanitary science, deserves a grateful record on our part. There appears a special fitness in the fact that, the last time Sibson appeared before the medical public, he delivered two Harveian lectures "on Bright's Disease and its Treatment," in which we find all those qualities of the scientific physician which have left so deep an impression upon the generation in which he lived. They do not, of course, convey to the reader the many estimable qualities of head and heart, the warmth and hcartiness of his friendship, the poetic love of nature and of art, which endeared him to all who had the privilege of intimate intercourse with him, and which we rarely see so harmoniously blended as they were in our departed friend. These, indeed, arc cn- shrined in our affectionate memories; but his chief claim to be mentioned in this place, and on this occasion, lies in the fact that those who knew him best may claim for him, in an especial manner, that he was the representative of the Harveian spirit of honest and truthful research into the mysteries of God's work in Nature.

In no department of medical science has careful study offered to the inquirer of late years more promise of reward than in the domain of the nervous system. We have, indeed, been told, but recently in this hall, by one of its most successful cultivators, how much of uncertainty yet surroutids