Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/49

 of truth in the world of matter, while it yields no real because no intelligent homage to the higher world of belief. To Cæsar that which is Cæsar’s, holds good in the realm of intellect as well as in an earthly state. Each has its rights, human intelligence as well as Divine authority, the lower as well as the higher. To confound the two were to render true fealty to neither.

One dares not, in an Oration to commemorate Harvey, omit, how superfluous soever the mention may be, some brief statement of what his great discovery was.

It was twofold.

First.—After corroborating the statements of those who had denied either that blood transudes through the walls of the ventricles, or that the pulmonary veins bring back to the left side of the heart air commingled with the blood, he asserts that the left ventricle has no other function than that of impelling the blood brought to it through the arteries, which themselves contain blood and nothing else, not air, nor vital spirit, but blood purified by its passage through the lungs, and so made apt for the nourishment of the whole body; and