Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th 1887 (IA b30475958).pdf/6

 that a knowledge of the ancient tongues on which our English language is founded is incompatible with ability to search out the secrets of Nature by way of experiment.

A striking refutation of the fallacy exists in the very man whom and whose labours we are met here to-day to commemorate, and whose honoured name as written in Latin by his own hand should stand in the forefront of my discourse as it does on the titlepage of his manuscript:

I say in his own hand for, thanks mainly to the energy and labours of Sir E. Sieveking, we have now before us a noble production of his manuscript lectures delivered in 1616; not merely the, but the , the very autograph sign manual of a great mind, wherein we can read not only his verbal utterances, but can, with a little care at the same time, trace character, education, and temperament. It is just ten years since the gentleman named above announced to the College the rediscovery of the first