Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th 1887 (IA b30475958).pdf/31

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year the Committee of Delegates appointed by this College and the Royal College of Surgeons of England reported:

1. That it is desirable to utilise the vacant ground adjoining the Examination Hall for scientific purposes, under the control and management of the two Colleges.

2. That the “scientific purposes” be, in the first place, the investigation and exposition of such branches of science connected with medicine and surgery as the two Colleges may from time to time determine.

The College has subsequently adopted the report.

Now I submit with the utmost respect, but with the greatest earnestness, to those here assembled that a course of physiological physics to be delivered in the new college of science would be a read boon to all students of medicine, whether they had succeeded in obtaining their diploma or not. The human body is a mass or congeries of separate machines, susceptible of mechanical explanation; but, setting aside the heart and lungs