Page:The Harveian oration 1905.djvu/57

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THE HARVEIAN ORATION.
53

rebuke of the Fellows of the College, and of their narrow and exclusive jealousy, as being responsible for this result. Speaking generally, it may be affirmed that a prolonged interval elapsed after Harvey's time, on account of well-known causes, during which little or nothing was done in the way of research, and comparatively few of our Fellows contributed anything to the advance of medical knowledge. Let us be thankful to-day that this is ancient history, and that the new scientific era completely altered the face of things, and has led progressively to the marvellous developments of which we now reap the fruits.

So far as this College itself is concerned as a body, its claim to aid modern scientific research chiefly rests on its association with the College of Surgeons in founding and working the laboratories at the Examination Hall, which were established early in 1890, but ceased to exist at the end of 1902, when the results of the practical experience there gained were handed over to the Metropolitan Asylums Board, while other parts of the building became utilised for kindred work in the Army Medical School, and for the investigations carried on in connection with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. An interesting report has been recently published, for which we are indebted to our distinguished Fellow, Dr. Pye-Smith, embodying the history of these laboratories, and in which a list is given of the