This poor creature, too, like all of his tribe, speaks of the medical profession as a great confederation of bigoted monopolists.  He, too, says that “If an innovator should appear, holding out hope to those in despair, and curing disorders which the faculty have recorded as irremediable, he is at once, and without inquiry, denounced as an empiric and an impostor.”  He, too, cites the inevitable names of Galileo and Harvey, and refers to the feelings excited by the great discovery of Jenner.  From the treatment of the great astronomer who was visited with the punishment of other heretics by the ecclesiastical authorities of a Catholic country some centuries since, there is no very direct inference to be drawn to the medical profession of the present time.  His name should be babbled no longer, after having been placarded for the hundredth time in the pages of St. John Long.  But if we are doomed to see constant reference to the names of Harvey and Jenner in every worthless pamphlet containing the prospectus of some new trick upon the public, let us, once for all, stare the facts in the face, and see how the discoveries of these great men were actually received by the medical profession.

In 1628, Harvey published his first work upon the circulation.  His doctrines were a complete revolution of the prevailing opinions of all antiquity.  They immediately found both champions and opponents; of which last, one only, Riolanus, seemed to Harvey worthy of an answer, on account of his “rank, fame, and learning.”  Controversy in science, as in religion, was not, in those days, carried on with all the courtesy which our present habits demand, and it is possible that some hard words may have been applied to Harvey, as it is very certain that he used the most contemptuous expressions towards others.

Harvey declares in his second letter to Riolanus, “Since the first discovery of the circulation, hardly a day, or a moment, has passed without my hearing it both well and ill spoken of; some attack it with great hostility, others defend it with high encomiums; one party believe that I have abundantly proved the truth of the doctrine against all the weight of opposing arguments, by experiments, observations, and dissections; others think it not yet sufficiently cleared up, and free from objections.”  Two really eminent Professors, Plempius of Louvain, and Walaeus of Leyden, were among its early advocates.

The opinions sanctioned by the authority of long ages, and the names of Hippocrates and Galen, dissolved away, gradually, but certainly, before the demonstrations of Harvey.  Twenty-four years after the publication of his first work, and six years before his death, his bust in marble was placed in the Hall of the College of Physicians, with a suitable inscription recording his discoveries.

Two years after this he was unanimously invited to accept the Presidency of that body; and he lived to see his doctrine established, and all reputable opposition withdrawn.