MORGAGNI, THE FATHER OF PATHOLOGY
Let us then blush, in this so ample and so wonderful field of nature (where performance still exceeds what is promised), to credit other men's traditions only, and thence come uncertain problems to spin out thorny and captious questions. Nature herselfe must be our adviser; the path she chalks must be our walk; for so while we confer with our own eies, and take our rise from meaner things to higher, we shall at length be received into her closet-secrets.
--Preface to Anatomical Exercitations concerning the Generation of Living Creatures, 1653. William Harvey.