Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th 1887 (IA b30475958).pdf/8

 appended, in some corner of his manuscript notes. For the discovery which has rendered Harvey’s name famous was strictly physical, I may even say mechanical. It had, moreover, the one great e’ement of accuracy in applied mechanics; it was computational and quantitative.

There can be little doubt that general ideas were abroad on the subject of the circulation, and that similar views, not indeed incorrect, but loose and inaccurate, had been entertained by others. Even Cœsalpinus, pace Dr. George Johnson, undeniably had glimpses of the truth. It was, however, Harvey who first saw and proved that the problem was one of hydrostatics, and that it must be solved and could be solved by mechanics, and proved by numerical relations.

There is a remarkable page in the lectures, one of the best written and most legible in the book, in which this is stated with absolute clearness, and which at once disposes of any claims advanced in other quarters. It runs as follows: