Page:The Harveian oration on Harvey in ancient and modern medicine (electronic resource) (IA b20420080).pdf/46

 we owe to Harvey of what is now rudimentary and commonplace. Knowledge has been advancing since his time in many and in- dependent lines; the achievements of Bell, Bright, and Addison had no direct connection with his, but it is not too much to assert that the medicine of to-day is scarcely less per- meated with the results of Harvey's discovery than is the human body with the circulation he discovered. It does not make him small to say that what he found out must have come to light had he never lived. If Columbus had not discovered America, someone else must have done so before now. The law of gravity might even have been revealed in the fulness of time to another if not to Newton. But the discoverer is before his age: in this lies one measure of his praise; another, and a more important one, is in the results of his discovery.

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