Page:The Harveian oration ; delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 26th, 1879 (IA b24976465).pdf/30

 exciting belief as it were à posteriori," and infers, for example, that if venous blood flows as he supposed from the circumference of the body to the centre, it would carry poison, like that of hydrophobia, the lucs venerea, and the like, and "finally" says Harvey, "reflecting on every part of medicine, physiology, pathology, semeiotics, therapeutics, when I see how many questions can be answered, how many doubts resolved, how much obscurity illustrated by the truth we have declared, I see a field of vast extent before me," and we may add, a very fruitful field it has been.

How, then, can it be, that Harvey's discovery arose out of a mere consideration of the uses of valves when he himself applied the deductive method to his own doctrines derived from an altogether different process of inquiry. Harvey's was the true scientific method as adopted by Jenner and all other illustrious discoverers of our College, and indeed there is but one method. It may be a subject of great interest to philosophers and logicians to discuss the modes by which great results in natural philosophy are obtained, and therefore it is not surprising that the method