The Harveian Oration on Harvey and Galen: Delivered before the Royal College of Physicians of London on October 19th
Authors: J. F. Payne
Journal: BMJ (1896)

Russell Reynolds, and a new benefaction received by the College during the past year the Harveian orator drew atten- tion to the special objects with which Harvey had founded this oration, and then proceeded as follows :-] FORERUNNERS AND DISCIPLES.It has always been the tradition, with which one would not willingly break, that Harvey himself and his great discovery should be specially commemorated on this occa- sion.A long series of eminent men have so fully and ably treated of the immediate circumstances of the dis- covery of the circulation, its consequences, and its development in modern times, that it would be difficult in- deedto add anything new to what they have already given us.But still I find that the genesis of Harvey's idea-and more especially its historical connection with the labours of the great men of antiquity who laid the foundations on which our modern anatomy and physiology rest, have not received the same degree of attention.The antecedents, however, no less than the consequences, have to be taken into account in giving its true value to any scientific discovery.It is generally admitted, though perhaps not always borne in mind, that no kind of knowledge has ever sprung into being without an antecedent, but is indissolubly connected with what was known before.In this respect science is only like all other kinds of natural phenomena.The present aspect of the world, geologists tell us, is a necessary con- sequence of previous conditions and changes.The present races of animals and plants are the descendants of a long series whose origin we cannot trace.Modern civilisation is the outcome of the efforts of man in all past ages to construct a social fabric.And so even our modern science which we sometimes speak of as though it were altogether a new thing -is only the final resultant of all the endeavours of men in past times to penetrate the secrets of Nature.When we look back upon those strivings they often seem perverse and con- tradictory.Men at certain periods seem to have gone backward rather than forward.We are struck less by the few grains of truth than by the great mass of what we call errors.But let us speak gently of these errors, and call them rather imperfect truths-for in science, at least, the truth of to-day is error to-morrow.They are parts of a continuous evolution, in which the so-called truth and the so-called error are inseparably mingled.Again, it seems to be sometimes thought that great original thinkers and discoverers make an exception to this law of con- tinuous evolution.We imagine that such men as Aristotle, Galileo, Harvey, and Newton were independent of their pre- decessors, that, in fact, their great work was to demolish the errors-that is, to destroy the work of those predecessors and to start afresh.But in reality no man, even the greatest, was ever thus independent.The investigator is indebted to those who went before him, not only for the instruments of research which they perfected, but for the conclusions which they arrived at.These conclusions, whether he admits or rejects them, serve for his help and guidance.It is easy to see that a discoverer profits by the ascertained discoveries of his forerunners.It is not so easily seen that the so-called errors of those men are also of great value to him.How many false solutions of aproblem are required before the true solution is arrived at!How many are indeed necessary elements in this final solution!I know that there are various kinds of errors, and that while some are stepping-stones others are stumbling-blocks, but still there is much truth in the general proposition that error is a stage in the development of truth.