Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, June 29th, 1867 (IA b22315263).pdf/28

 of medical philosophy. They will, I hope, have seen how far that light may bear upon the subject of the propagation of epidemics, practically affecting all sanitary questions; how far, also, it encourages the hope of arriving eventually at the elucidation of all those functions of the human frame which remain but partially understood: how far, in short, it may disclose completely secrets which impede our perfect application of Harvey's own discovery of the circulation. In order that our aims should not seem to soar too high, or our hopes to exceed the moderation of sober-minded students, we like to seize occasions such as this to display our method of procedure, and to make known what the labour of the nineteenth-century physician really is.

It is not long since our ears were startled by the question, Is the medical a scientific profession?—a question as new as it is strange, and, I may be allowed to add, as insulting as it is new. Though we would not have mooted it, yet it does not misbecome us to reply. We say, then, Yes, emphatically yes. We are, indeed, of those