Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/21

 wondrous instinct or a profound acquaintance with astronomy. These worms, he says, observe the motions of the moon, and ought to be attacked when the moon is in the wane.

his was considered valuable matter by readers in 1711, for the work sold rapidly, and more than three editions were bought by the profession in a few years. If we now pass on from 1711 to a period nearly a century later, we find that the great discovery of Harvey had done but little for pathology, that it was still ‘a scheme too fine to be drawn into practice;’ but yet great advances were making, facts were being collected and arranged, and all attempts to generalise were met by the most critical scrutiny.

Though we are greatly indebted to our knowledge of the circulation of the blood for much that modern science has done for medicine, still we cannot but allow that pathology would have been enriched by a vast amount of discovery had we been ignorant of the fact up to the present day. The pathology of nervous diseases might have been developed, and the discoveries of Bright, intimately connected as they are with the subject of blood