Page:The Harveian oration delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 26, 1889 (IA b22361285).pdf/23

 animal economy, and we must therefore look for other circumstances which had a greater share in modelling the system of physic.’

So far as I have been able to determine the point, Laennec appears to have been the first pathologist to whose discoveries a knowledge of the circulation was absolutely necessary. Had not Harvey described the motion of the heart and its consequences, we never could have interpreted the phenomenon observed in cardiac auscultation.

It was Harvey who first clearly described the systolic and diastolic states, and thus enabled the great auscultator to deduce, almost as of necessity, the various consequences of valvular imperfection. Again, had we not recognised the circulation, pathologists must have remained in ignorance of the simple and beautiful subject of embolism and its multitudinous applications to the explanation of morbid conditions. Without the knowledge given us by Harvey, how full of mystery must have appeared those congestions which we now at once explain, or anxiously anticipate.

The liver which is to appear below the ribs as a consequence of cardiac imperfection—the fluid which is to fill the peritoneum as a consequence of