Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/44

 pathological insight becomes more clear, the growth of practical power will surely follow.".

It would be tedious to dwell here upon details with which my audience is as well, or better, ac- quainted than I am; the more so, as the time is too short even remotely to do justice to the memory of past or to the labours of present workers. But it is well to bear in mind that, in this field also, we may quote Harvey as an autho- rity for the due appreciation of thosc elements of health which it is the object of State medicine to foster and to secure, and which he feelingly dwells upon in his account of Parr, whose body he examined after death by command of His Majesty. Here, as elsewhere in his writings, Harvey indicates much that he doubtless enlarged upon more fully in those works which, unfortu- nately for medical science, were destroyed in the revolutionary war.

No one can say how much more rapidly medicine would have advanced, had not ruthless hands been laid upon those works of Harvey, of which only the titles have been brought down to us. But any one who has learnt to revere Harvey in what we possess of him, and has become familiar with his marvellous industry, his logical mind, and his powers of observation, cannot but feel that every- thing that he committed to paper was worth pre- serving, and was certain to impart knowledge of