Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/28

 to study and search out the secrets of nature by way of experiment. He clearly did not use the latter term in its more ordinary signification, but by way of experiment, he meant by way of facts, instead of by the way of fancy, for he says "It were disgraceful, with this most spacious and admirable realm of nature before us, and where the reward ever exceeds the promise, did we take the reports of others upon trust and go on coining crude problems out of these, and on them hanging knotty and captious and petty disputations. Nature herself is to be addressed." One might have thought that this maxim had been written with the pen of Bacon, but it does not appear that Harvey ever read Bacon's works, and, indeed, it seems nearly certain that his great discovery was made, although not published to the world, before the 'Novum Organum' was written. It is clear that Harvey learned nothing from Bacon, and this has lead to the belief amongst some persons that he could not have adopted the Baconian method of inquiry, but that Harvey made his discovery by a simple deductive or à priori mode of reasoning, suggested by the presence of valves in the veins, already shewn by Fabricius. No one who has