Page:The Harveian oration for 1874.djvu/66

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54

our elections; a pair of silver candlesticks, a silver inkstand, and a silver bell, and your wand, Sir, the emblem of your office. It all, if melted down, might fetch perhaps twenty pounds, but I doubt it.

‘At fides, et ingeni
Benigna vena est.’

In that stood the old Roman’s wealth; in that stands ours.

Our great benefactors are they who have left us the inheritance of their example. They are such as Sydenham, who, with clear, open intellect, looked around him in search of truth: who used theories and systems as counters to mark with, or as the cords with which to tie his facts into bundles for greater convenience, and more handy reference. And so with him it has come to pass, as with Hippocrates, that no time will ever antiquate his writings, nor advance of scientific knowledge lessen their value. Or such as Meade, the man of universal culture, and yet the great practical physician—

‘Health waits on Meade’s prescription still—’

says a contemporary,[1] the associate of princes,

  1. Sir C. Hanbury Williams, in a Grateful Ode, as he