LONDON: C. J. CLAY AND SONS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AVE MARIA LANE
1904
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO
Sir WILLIAM SELBY CHURCH, Bart., K.C.B., M.D.
THE PRESIDENT
AND TO
THE FELLOWS
OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON
THIS ORATION IS DEDICATED
WITH MUCH RESPECT
THE
HARVEIAN ORATION
1904
Mr. President and Gentlemen, The officials fellows and friends of this
college assemble to-day, as we and our predecessors have assembled year
by year for two-and-a-half centuries, to commemorate the services which
William Harvey has rendered to mankind, and in order to keep alive in
our own minds the wise counsels which he addressed to us, the memory of
which he desired us ever to renew at the festival which he founded. We
are to honour our great profession, to continue in mutual love and
affection among ourselves, and to search and to study out the secrets of
nature by way of experiment in order to prevent suffering and to
ameliorate human life.
In commencing the pleasing duty which the kindness of our President has
placed in my hands it is needful to comply with the desire of our
founder that we commemorate the names of benefactors of this college.
The lengthy and honourable roll was so fully dealt with by the learned
orator of last year that I shall merely add to his recital the names of
those who since that time have given of their substance for the
advancement of medicine. Dr. Horace Dobell of Parkstone Heights, Dorset,
gave the sum of £500 to encourage research into the ultimate origin,
evolution, and life-history of bacilli and other pathogenic
micro-organisms; Dr. George Oliver, Fellow of this College, of
Harrogate, and Farnham, Surrey, has given £2,000 to found the
Oliver-Sharpey lectureship or prize in memory of William Sharpey of
University College, and to encourage the application of physiological
knowledge for the prevention and cure of disease and for the
prolongation of life; and Lady Clark has presented to us a bust of our
revered and lamented former president, Sir Andrew Clark.
No student of the works of Harvey can fail to bear in mind the great
loss we have sustained this year in the decease of Sir Edward Sieveking,
who in his Harveian Oration drew special attention to the Prelectiones
Anatomiae and in conjunction with Dr. George Johnson and other Fellows
of this College arranged for the admirable autotype reproduction of
Harvey’s manuscript which we possess.
Desiring to render this address as little wearisome as may be I propose
to divide it into two parts: the first archaeological, dealing with
Egyptian medicine, the medicine god, and the earliest inquiries known to
have been made concerning the circulation and circulatory diseases—viz.,
those of the physicians of ancient Egypt, a department of pre-Harveian
work, and perhaps the only one, which has not been dealt with in this
room. Secondly, I wish to speak with great brevity on the more practical
subject of the preventive treatment of certain forms of circulatory
disease.
I
Egypt and the Earliest Researches on the Circulation
To all who love our venerable and beneficent profession the spectacle of
our predecessors in early ages striving in darkness and difficulty to
acquire that hidden knowledge to which we have partially attained is
interesting and should awaken our sympathy. As was remarked by the
learned Harveian Orator of 1896: ‘The past is worth our study and ever
more so the further we advance.’[1]
The information which archaeological research has of late afforded,
though in a fitful and partial manner, as to the earliest history of
medicine, and particularly in regard to that department in which our
founder laboured, is not unworthy of our attention.
The first evidence of definite inquiry, in any degree worthy to be
called scientific by a body of men specially educated for, and devoting
their lives to medical service, occurs in the early history of Egypt.
The ability, learning, and artistic skill shown during the early
dynasties, which all Egyptologists recognize, are paralleled by the
remarkable interest then manifested in medicine. Works on anatomy and
medicine are stated to have been written even by the early sovereigns of
Egypt. Athothis, the son of Menes, who lived six thousand years ago,[2]
is stated in the Berlin papyrus to have written a book on medicine, and
I shall soon have to quote from the anatomical writings of the Pharaoh
Usaphais, one of his successors; Semti, the seventh monarch of the same
dynasty, pursued similar investigations. It is clear that, like the
Greeks, these men in the childhood of the world believed that ὑγιαίνειν
µὲν ἄριστον ἐστιν, sanitation was to them the first of the sciences.
[Illustration: PLATE I
Ancient bronze figure of I-em-hotep, the Egyptian God of Medicine
(By the kind permission of the Committee and Curator of the
Liverpool Museum)]