Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th 1887 (IA b30475958).pdf/7

 Harveian lectures, and now the autotype copy with its transcript is fully before us.

My object therefore on the present occasion will be to endeavour briefly to comment on this most interesting and unique work, and to sketch the lineaments of Harvey, self-revealed, as a scholar, a lecturer, a physicist, and as a man of genial, not to say humorous, disposition.

In so doing we may gather from the ipsissima verba of one who “being dead yet speaketh”—two lessons, which I believe have not occupied the attention of my many far abler predecessors in this chair.

First, an instruction in the art and method of lecturing, and wherein in this age of printed books it may still be of service.

Secondly, what a large field of discovery and research still lies open to us, as it did to Harvey, on the borderground between physics and physiological medicine. For this reason I have ventured to give my oration the title of ’Ίατροφυσικà, just such a word as he would, I fancy, have delighted to jot down, possibly in red ink with his cypher