Old and New Views on the Treatment of Consumption 1

Abstract

DR. THEODORE WILLIAMS stated that 255 years had elapsed since William Harvey instituted this festival, and that orations had been delivered in Latin or English ever since in commemoration of benefactors, and with Harvey's exhortation to the fellows and members to study out the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and to continue in mutual love and affection among themselves. He then proceeded to review the various steps of Harvey's great discovery of the circulation of the blood, and remarked that its author, in spite of the severest criticism, lived to see it firmly established in the annals of medicine and to witness the conversion of the greater number of his opponents. The seed sown by this discovery, based on observations and experiments, and put forth with convincing logic by this most accurate observer, had revealed to the world further scientific truths, which have been elaborated by Harvey's successors in the arts of medicine and of surgery, and have brought forth a harvest of improvements-physiological, clinical, pathological, and therapeutical-which added immensely to the total sum of human health and happiness. Dr. Williams instanced as examples the administration of ansthetics, intravenous and hypodermic injections, and treatment by vaccines, while auscultation and the graphic methods of measuring blood pressure and rhythm might also be counted as outcomes of the knowledge initiated by Harvey's discovery.