Page:The Harveian oration, 1873.djvu/48

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42 very well differ, as neither of them can lay his proof of supposed identity or difference alongside of that which the other may pos- sess, or may suppose he does. It is with much pleasure that I refer to Dr. Rutherford's paper on the Influence of the Vagus on the Vascular System, which appears in the Edinburgh Royal Society Transactions for 1870, vol. xxvi. In that year, having to deliver an address to the Biological Section of the British Association at Liverpool, I made bold to say that the results to which Dr. Rutherford had come, and which were then only known to me in an abstract in the Cambridge -and Edinburgh Journal of Anatomy and Physiology (May 1869, p. 402), would prove to be of the highest value and importance. His memoir now published in extenso, and extending over forty- two pages, as fully justifies my predic- tion as it will fully repay any one who will take the pleasant trouble of reading it. The most important result in a practical point of view is the demonstration which Dr. Ruther- ford has given of the nerve-circle, whereby, in the way of reflex action, the all-important