Page:The Harveian oration (electronic resource) - Royal College of Physicians, 1881 (IA b20411911).pdf/27

 must be made. But whether practical medicine is to drift into a trade in which the breath of popularity alone raises a man above his fellows, or is to mount into that position in which the esteem of those competent to judge shall be the only portal to eminence, who can say? It is for the younger Fellows of this College to choose which path they will follow; and may God defend the Right! Let me entreat them, in the words of Harvey, to imitate the example of past benefactors, and to contribute their endeavours for the advancement of this Society according to that example, and to search and to study out the secrets of Nature by way of experiment.

And here it is natural to ask how far of late years students have regarded this course as the only sound basis of scientific knowledge and practice. Time would fail me were I to attempt to analyse all that has been done in the various departments of pathology, and endeavour to sift the wheat from the chaff. I propose to select two only among the salient subjects of observation and discussion, and compare them together from this point of view.

Harvey's name comes down to us as a great physiologist. No theory of inflammation arose in his mind out of the discovery of the circulation. He did not waste his energies on idle speculations; but, assuming the necessity of some hypothesis as