Page:The advancement of science by experimental research - the Harveian oration, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, June 27th, 1883 (IA b24869958).pdf/27

23 have mankind at large for my enemies, so much doth wont and custom that become as another nature, and doctrine once sown and that hath struck deep root, and respect for antiquity influence all men. Still the die is cast, and my trust is in the love of truth, and the candour that inheres in cultivated minds. And sooth to say, when I surveyed my mass of evidence, whether derived from vivisec. tions and my various reflections on them, or from the ventricles of the heart and the vessels that enter into and issue from them, the symmetry and size of these con- duits; for nature doing nothing in vain, would never have given them so large a relative size without a purpose—or from the arrangement and intimate structure of the valves in particular, and of the other parts of the heart in general, with many things beside, I frequently seriously be- thought me, and long revolved in my mind, what might be the quantity of blood which was transmitted, in how short a time its passage might be effected, and the like; and not finding it possible that this could