Page:The Harveian oration 1906.djvu/25

Rh absolutely in all conceptions of the functions of the body, and in no department more serenely than in that relating to the heart, the blood and its movements. Upon his views I need not dwell further than to remind you that he regarded the liver as the source of the blood, of which there were two kinds, the one in the veins, the other in the arteries, both kinds in ceaseless ebb and flow, the only communication between these closed systems being through pores in the ventricular septum. He knew the lesser circulation, but thought it only for the nutrition of the lungs. The heart was a lamp which is furnished with oil by the blood and with air from the lungs. Practically until the middle of the seventeenth century Galen’s physiology ruled the schools, and yet for years the profession had been in latent possession of a knowledge of the circulation. Indeed, a good case has been made out for Hippocrates, in whose works occur some remarkably suggestive sentences. In the sixteenth century the lesser circulation was described with admirable fullness by Servetus and by Columbus, and both Sarpi and Caesalpinus had Hippocratic glimmerings of the greater circulation. These men, with others doubtless, were in latent possession of the truth. But every one of them saw darkly through Galenical glasses, and theirs was the hard but the common lot never to reach such conscious possession as everywhere to make men acquiesce. One must have the disinterestedness of the dead to deal with a problem about which controversy has raged, and in which national issues have been allowed to blur the brightness of an image which would be clear as day to those with eyes to see. Nor would I refer to a matter long since settled by those best competent to judge, had