It was
reserved for the immortal Harvey to put into practice the experimental
method by which he demonstrated conclusively that the blood moved in a
circle. The "De Motu Cordis" marks the final break of the modern spirit
with the old traditions. It took long for men to realize the value of
this "inventum mirabile" used so effectively by the Alexandrians--by
Galen--indeed, its full value has only been appreciated within the past
century. Let me quote a paragraph from my Harveian Oration.(33) "To the
age of the hearer, in which men had heard and heard only, had succeeded
the age of the eye in which men had seen and had been content only
to see. But at last came the age of the hand--the thinking, devising,
planning hand, the hand as an instrument of the mind, now re-introduced
into the world in a modest little monograph from which we may date the
beginning of experimental medicine."
(33) Osler: An Alabama Student, etc., pp. 329-330.
Harvey caught the experimental spirit in Italy, with brain, eye and hand
as his only aids, but now an era opened in which medicine was to derive
an enormous impetus from the discovery of instruments of precision. "The
new period in the development of the natural sciences, which reached
its height in the work of such men as Galileo, Gilbert and Kepler, is
chiefly characterized by the invention of very important instruments for
aiding and intensifying the perceptions of the senses, by means of which
was gained a much deeper insight into the phenomena than had hitherto
been possible.
Pages:
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242