Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/57

 he asserted in eloquent words, ‘That facts cognisable by the senses wait upon no opinions, and that the works of nature bow to no antiquity; for indeed there is nothing either more ancient, or of higher authority than nature.’

Still, to us as practitioners of the healing arts, what help came there in the exercise of our calling? It is said that Harvey had the rare happiness, notwithstanding the opposition which at first attended the announcement of his discovery, to see it universally accepted before he died. Was human life prolonged, was human suffering mitigated, as its direct and immediate consequence? To both these questions we must answer No; but the no must be accompanied by two qualifications.

First. In the ordinary affairs of human life many things are done rightly, but on wrong, or at least, on insufficient grounds, just as in the world of morals many a man is diligent, or temperate, or chaste, on grounds far lower than the noblest. The seaman still navigated his ship in the main correctly by the stars nearly three hundred years after the use of