Page:The Harveian oration 1903.djvu/14

 corrected by the seventeenth century, "Galen's sources of evidence respecting the motion of the heart were the same as Harvey's—viz. comparison of structure in a variety of animals, argument from the use of these structures, observation of the living heart, and numerous experiments on animals."

I am not concerned, even were it needful, again to tell the oft-told tale of Harvey's great discovery and how he demonstrated the truth thereof, for that it was that made his epoch-making work the glory that it is; nor yet to defend his claims to the full merits of all he did against the pretensions of those who sought to be-little it or even boldly aimed to usurp what to him alone belonged. This has been done more than once and done completely. Nothing I could say could add one iota to the justification; to attempt it were almost to cast a doubt upon its truth.

Briefly would I commemorate the good deeds and the munificence of our founders.

And first, King Henry VIII who by Charter in the tenth year of his reign (1518) incorporated this College, moved thereto in great measure by Cardinal Wolsey, but essentially at the instigation of one of his Physicians—Thomas Linacre—whom on that account