Page:The Harveian oration 1890.djvu/10

6 his claim to be the discoverer of the circulation of the blood has been fully established, his writings have been found to be pregnant with the ideas and discoveries of later generations ; — nay, more, the man himself has been proved to be not less than his work. His great discovery was no chance find, no mere lucky hit, but the natural outcome of his genius and of his time. How then can the belated Harveian Orator of the present day hope to add even one fresh pebble to the cairn which the love and the labour of generations have raised over the '* im- mortal" Harvey.

On beginning my quest for something new it soon became clear that, of the two fields more espe- cially open to me. Sir James Paget had practically exhausted that of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in his journals of St. Bartholomew's Hospital ; with notes by James Paget,' published in 1846, but I still hoped to discover, by the help of learned friends, some hitherto unnoticed records of Harvey's life in Oxford. Nor, indeed, is it impossible that such do exist although I have failed to unearth them. The sole result of my search, and this I owe to the kind- ness of the present Warden of Merton College, is the following brief report, in the Register of Merton College, of Harvey's speech to the Fellows on April 11th, 1645, two days after his admission to the Wardenship.
 * Records of Wm. Harvey in extracts from the

" Dominus Custos, Convocatis in Alta Aula Sociis, haBC verba ad illos fecit. Forsitan decessores Custo- diara CoUegii ambiisse, ut exinde sese locupletarent.