Page:The Harveian oration on Harvey in ancient and modern medicine (electronic resource) (IA b20420080).pdf/16

4 HARVEY IN ANCIENT AND this College. Bacon and Harvey were closely associated; Harvey was Bacon's physician, and had, as Aubrey tells us, but a mean opinion of his philosophy, though he esteemed him much for his wit. Harvey was widely separated from Milton politically, but he may have read his earlier works. Newton was fifteen when Harvey died.

It is no part of my purpose to describe Harvey's work in detail, or to vindicate his claim to the discovery with which his name is connected; the latter duty, as it recently became, has been ably performed by Dr. George Johnson. The difficulty of the dis- covery and its magnitude are the two con- siderations pertaining to it which cannot be passed over. To appreciate them we must take our stand at different points of view, and those widely separated. To see the difficulty we must place ourselves in the early part of the seventeenth century, and assume the state of mind belonging to Harvey's immediate prede- cessors. We who have passively imbibed from our infancy what was once a novelty and matter