Excerpt from The Harveian Oration Delivered Before the Royal College or Physicians, London, October 18, 1888 Mr President and Gentlemen, To-day we meet together in fulfilment of the express wish of Harvey, our illustrious benefactor, and most distinguished ornament, and it is my duty "to commemorate the benefactors of the College and to encourage its members to search out the secrets of nature by way of experiment." I will not apologise for endeavouring to perform this duty, imposed upon me by our past President, heartily though I wish it had fallen into worthier hands. As a duty I accepted the task; it is made a pleasant one by the feeling that, in commemorating the achievements of the past, I shall have the sympathy of my audience; and if by pointing to the direction in which further advances are possible, and suggesting routes by which these advances may be made, I can stimulate and encourage any here present to search out these secrets of nature, I shall feel that the very deep anxiety with which I undertook to address you has not been altogether fruitless. And what are the achievements of the past? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.