Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, London, on October 18, 1884 (IA b21778929).pdf/29

 is a declaration that such truth is not universal. Much of his work has become a part of common knowledge; and so, will live on in the lives of those who are the "interpreters of Nature," so long as Nature lasts. But the wish that animates us to-day is to hand down to those who follow us, some knowledge of the Individual to whose life we owe so much, and whose Personality we would not "willingly let die." There are many ways in which this may be done, but I will allude to only two.

1°. The names of some great men have been associated with the discoveries that they have made; and they perhaps are used, many of them, in such familiar way that they carry little or no suggestion of their meaning. In some generation or two, yet to come, may it not be that the etymology of such words as Fallopian tube, Meckel's ganglion, Bright's disease, Addison's disease, Corrigan's pulse, Galvanism, Faradism, an Ohm or a Volt will have become somewhat obscure? Or, if the meaning of such phrases may be found in lexicons, are there many who will try to find out those meanings? It seems to me probable that individuality will not be main- tained by such means; and that future students may sometimes be disposed to ask-as I once heard the question put quite seriously-whether or no the "portal vein was not named after the distinguished French physician "> Portal!

While the progress of science is constructive, of generaliza- tion, and so-called "laws," it is destructive, as Harvey says, of the individual life; but yet we give "names to organs functions, forces, and shrewd connotations of phenomena, in order-while finding them convenient at the time-to delay if not arrest, the disintegration of the work of those men, whose names we thus hand down to those who follow us.

Do we not think it probable that, as future research proceeds, some of these names--which have passed into many