Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/230

130 highest interest to the medical practitioner,—how speedily is pain relieved or removed by the detraction of blood, the application of cupping-glasses, or the compression of the artery which leads to a part? It sometimes vanishes as if by magic. But these are topics that I must refer to my 'Medical Observations/ where they will be found exposed at length and explained.

Some weak and inexperienced persons vainly seek by dialectics and far-fetched arguments, either to upset or establish things that are only to be founded on anatomical demonstration, and believed on the evidence of the senses. He who truly desires to be informed of the question in hand, and whether the facts alleged be sensible, visible, or not, must be held bound either to look for himself, or to take on trust the conclusions to which they have come who have looked; and indeed there is no higher method of attaining to assurance and certainty. Who would pretend to persuade those who had never tasted wine that it was a drink much pleasanter to the palate than water? By what reasoning should we give the blind from birth to know that the sun was luminous, and far surpassed the stars in brightness? And so it is with the circulation of the blood, which the world has now had before it for so many years, illustrated by proofs cognizable by the senses, and confirmed by various experiments. No one has yet been found to dispute the sensible facts, the motion, efflux and afflux of the blood, by like observations based on the evidence of sense, or to oppose the experiments adduced, by other experiments of the same character; nay, no one has yet attempted an opposition on the ground of ocular testimony.

There have not been wanting many who, inexperienced and ignorant of anatomy, and making no appeal to the senses in their opposition, have, on the contrary, met it with empty assertions, and mere suppositions, with assertions derived from the lessons of teachers and captious cavillings; many, too, have vainly sought refuge in words, and these not always very nicely chosen, but reproachful and contumelious; which, however, have no farther effect than to expose their utterer's vanity and weakness, and ill breeding and lack of the arguments that are to be sought in the conclusions of the senses, and false sophistical reasonings that seem utterly opposed to sense. Even as the waves of the Sicilian sea, excited by the blast, dash against the rocks around