imagine they found
nothing treasonable among those papers, yet, in the process of rummaging
through them, they destroyed all the materials which Harvey had spent a
laborious life in accumulating; and hence it is that the man's work and
labours are represented by so little in apparent bulk.

What I chiefly propose to do to-night is to lay before you an account of
the nature of the discovery which Harvey made, and which is termed the
Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood. And I desire also, with
some particularity, to draw your attention to the methods by which that
discovery was achieved; for, in both these respects, I think, there will
be much matter for profitable reflection.

Let me point out to you, in the first place, with respect to this
important matter of the movements of the heart and the course of the
blood in the body, that there is a certain amount of knowledge
which must have been obtained without men taking the trouble to seek
it--knowledge which must have been taken in, in the course of time,
by everybody who followed the trade of a butcher, and still more so by
those people who, in ancient times, professed to divine the course of
future events from the entrails of animals. It is quite obvious to
all, from ordinary accidents, that the bodies of all the higher animals
contain a hot red fluid--the blood. Everybody can see upon the surface
of some part of the skin, underneath that skin, pulsating tubes, which
we know as the arteries. Everybody can see under the surface of the skin
more delicate and softer looking tubes, which do not pulsate, which are
of a bluish colour, and are termed the veins. And every person who has
seen a recently killed animal opened knows that these two kinds of tubes
to which I have just referred, are connected with an apparatus which
is placed in the chest, which apparatus, in recently killed animals,
is still pulsating. And you know that in yourselves you can feel the
pulsation of this organ, the heart, between the fifth and sixth ribs. I
take it that this much of anatomy and physiology has been known from the
oldest times, not only as a matter of curiosity, but because one of the
great objects of men, from their earliest recorded existence, has been
to kill one another, and it was a matter of considerable importance to
know which was the best place for hitting an enemy. I can refer you to
very ancient records for most precise and clear information that one of
the best places