On the animal alkaloids : the ptomaïnes, leucomaïnes, and extractives in their pathological relations / by Sir William Aitken.

Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the animal alkaloids : the ptomaïnes, leucomaïnes, and extractives in their pathological relations / by Sir William Aitken. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    Discoveries are Slowly Elaborated. open to question, and to doubt, as to their usefulness. If one is sent to seek for some specific thing, there may- be many and varied inducements to find it, or some- thmg which may meet the requirements of the mission. Discoveries are not made in this way. No single man has yet accomphshed by Umself any notable discovery— not even when he sat himself down more or less com- fortably to seek for one. Discoveries have usually been the outcome of many thoughts of many minds, working through many cycles of time. Thus it is that discoveries are very slowly and as it were quite un- consciously elaborated—one man's work preparing the way for advances towards ultimate discovery by another. It in no way detracts from the great discovery of Harvey that the way had been paved for it by the discovery of the valves in the veins by Sylvius and Fabricius, and by that of the lesser circulation by Bervetus. Neither is the merit of the subsequent dis- covery of the lesser circulation by the great anatomist Malpighi, in any way lessened by the fact that the existence of the channels first seen by him, was as clearly pointed to by Harvey's reasoning, as the ex- istence of Neptune by the calculations of Le Verrier and of Adams. So also there can be no doubt that Kepler's elaborate series of measurements, and subse- quently the measurements of Picard, as well as the discussions of Wren, HaUey and Hooke, led up to and enabled Newton (by calculating from Kepler's laws), to arrive at the great discovery of the law of gravity, which up to that time had been merely a conjecture.* But there is still another point to be noted as regards discoveries, namely : —That when discoveries are made * Encyolopasdia Britannica, art. Newton.