[1] Affiliated with the university, but autonomous and independent,
is the Andover Theological Seminary, which in 1908 removed from
Andover to Cambridge.
[2] The requirements for admission as changed in 1908 are based on
the "unit system"; satisfactory marks must be got in subjects
aggregating 26 units, the unit being a measure of preparatory study.
Of these 26 units, English (4 units), algebra (2), plane geometry
(2), some science or sciences (2), history (2; either Greek and
Roman, or American and English), a modern language (2; French and
German) are prescribed; prospective candidates for the degree of A.B.
are required to take examinations for 4 additional units in Greek or
Latin, and for the other 8 points have large range of choice; and
candidates for the degree of S.B. must take additional examinations
in French or German (2 units) and have a similar freedom of choice in
making up the remaining 10 units.
HARVEST (A.S. _haerfest_ "autumn," O.H. Ger. _herbist_, possibly through
an old Teutonic root representing Lat. carpere, "to pluck"), the season
of the ingathering of crops. Harvest has been a season of rejoicing from
the remotest ages. The ancient Jews celebrated the Feast of Pentecost as
their harvest festival, the wheat ripening earlier in Palestine. The
Romans had their Cerealia or feasts in honour of Ceres. The Druids
celebrated their harvest on the 1st of November. In pre-reformation
England Lammas Day (Aug. 1st, O.S.) was observed at the beginning of the
harvest festival, every member of the church presenting a loaf made of
new wheat. Throughout the world harvest has always been the occasion for
many queer customs which all have their origin in the animistic belief
in the Corn-Spirit or Corn-Mother. This personification of the crops has
left its impress upon the harvest customs of modern Europe. In west
Russia, for example, the figure made out of the last sheaf of corn is
called the Bastard, and a boy is wrapped up in it. The woman who binds
this sheaf represents the "Cornmother," and an elaborate simulation of
childbirth takes place, the boy in the sheaf squalling like a new-born
child, and being, on his liberation, wrapped in swaddling bands. Even in
England vestiges of sympathetic magic can be detected. In
Northumberland, where the harvest rejoicing takes place at the close of
the reaping and not at the ingathering, as soon as the last sheaf is set
on end the reapers shout that they have "got the kern." An image formed
of a wheatsheaf, and dressed in a white frock and coloured ribbons, is
hoisted on a pole. This is the "kern-baby" or harvest-queen, and it is
carried back in triumph with music and shouting and set up in a
prominent place during the harvest supper. In Scotland the last sheaf if
cut before Hallowmas is called the "maiden," and the youngest girl in
the harvest-field is given the privilege of cutting it. If the reaping
finishes after Hallowmas the last corn cut is called the _Cailleach_
(old woman). In some parts of Scotland this last sheaf is kept till
Christmas morning and then divided among the cattle "to make them
thrive all the year round," or is kept till the first mare foals and is
then given to her as her first food. Throughout the world, as J. G.
Frazer shows, the semi-worship of the last sheaf is or has been the
great feature of the harvest-home. Among harvest customs none is more
interesting than harvest cries. The cry of the Egyptian reapers
announcing the death of the corn-spirit, the rustic prototype of Osiris,
has found its echo on the world's harvest-fields, and to this day, to
take an English example, the Devonshire reapers utter cries of the same
sort and go through a ceremony which in its main features is an exact
counterpart of pagan worship. "After the wheat is cut they 'cry the
neck.' ... An old man goes round to the shocks and picks out a bundle of
the best ears be can find ... this bundle is called 'the neck'; the
harvest hands then stand round in a ring, the old man holding 'the neck'
in the centre. At a signal from him they take off their hats, stooping
and holding them with both hands towards the ground. Then all together
they utter in a prolonged cry 'the neck!' three times, raising
themselves upright with their hats held above their heads. Then they
change their cry to 'Wee yen! way yen!' or, as some report, 'we haven!'"
On a fine still autumn evening "crying the neck" has a wonderful effect
at a distance. In East Anglia there still survives the custom known as
"Hallering Largess." The harvesters beg largess from passers, and when
they have received money they shout thrice "Halloo, largess," having
first formed a circle, bowed their heads low crying "Hoo-Hoo-Hoo," and
then jerked their heads backwards and uttered a shrill shriek of "Ah!
Ah!"
For a very full discussion of harvest customs see J. G. Frazer, _The
Golden Bough_, and Brand's _Antiquities of Great Britain_ (Hazlitt's
edit., 1905).
HARVEST-BUG, the familiar name for mites of the family Trombidiidae,
belonging to the order Acari of the class Arachnida. Although at one
time regarded as constituting a distinct species, described as _Leptus
autumnalis_, harvest-bugs are now known to be the six-legged larval
forms of several British species of mites of the genus _Trombidium_.
They are minute, rusty-brown organisms, barely visible to the naked eye,
which swarm in grass and low herbage in the summer and early autumn, and
cause considerable, sometimes intense, irritation by piercing and
adhering to the skin of the leg, usually lodging themselves in some part
where the clothing is tight, such as the knee when covered with gartered
stockings. They may be readily destroyed, and the irritation allayed, by
rubbing the affected area with some insecticide like turpentine or
benzine. They are not permanently parasitic, and if left alone will
leave their temporary host to resume the active life characteristic of
the adult mite, which is predatory in habits, preying upon minute living
animal organisms.
HARVESTER, HARVEST-SPIDER, or HARVEST-MAN, names given to Arachnids of
the order Opiliones, referable to various species of the family
Phalangiidae. Harvest-spiders or harvest-men, so-called on account of
their abundance in the late summer and early autumn, may be at once
distinguished from all true spiders by the extreme length and thinness
of their legs, and by the small size and spherical or oval shape of the
body, which is not divided by a waist or constriction into an anterior
and a posterior region. They may be met with in houses, back yards,
fields, woods and heaths; either climbing on walls, running over the
grass, or lurking under stones and fallen tree trunks. They are
predaceous, feeding upon small insects, mites and spiders. The males are
smaller than the females, and often differ from them in certain
well-marked secondary sexual characters, such as the mandibular
protuberance from which one of the common English spiders, _Phalangium
cornutum_, takes its scientific name. The male is also furnished with a
long and protrusible penis, and the female with an equally long and
protrusible ovipositor. The sexes pair in the autumn, and the female, by
means of her ovipositor, lays her eggs in some cleft or hole in the soil
and leaves them to their fate. After breeding, the parents die with the
autumn cold; but the eggs retain their vitality through the winter and
hatch with the warmth of spring and early summer, the young gradually
attaining maturity as the latter season progresses. Hence the
prevalence of adult individuals in the late summer and autumn, and at no
other time of the year. They are provided with a pair of glands,
situated one on each side of the carapace, which secrete an
evil-smelling fluid believed to be protective in nature. Harvest-men are
very widely distributed and are especially abundant in temperate
countries of the northern hemisphere. They are also, however, common in
India, where they are well known for their habit of adhering together in
great masses, comparable to a swarm of bees, and of swaying gently
backwards and forwards. The long legs of harvest-men serve them not only
as organs of rapid locomotion, but also as props to raise the body well
off the ground, thus enabling the animals to stalk unmolested from the
midst of an army of raiding ants. (R. I. P.)
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Harvest-man (_Phalangium cornutum_, Linn.);
profile of male, with legs and palpi truncated.
a, Ocular tubercle.
b, Mandible.
c, Labrum (upper lip).
d, Sheath of penis protruded.
e, Penis.
f, The glans.]
HARVEY, GABRIEL (c. 1545-1630), English writer, eldest son of a
ropemaker of Saffron-Walden, Essex, was born about 1545. He matriculated
at Christ's College, Cambridge, in 1566, and in 1570 was elected fellow
of Pembroke Hall. Here he formed a lasting friendship with Edmund
Spenser, and it has been suggested (_Athen. Cantab._, ii. 258) that he
may have been the poet's tutor. Harvey was a scholar of considerable
weight, who has perhaps been judged too exclusively from the brilliant
invectives directed against him by Thomas Nashe. Henry Morley, writing
in the _Fortnightly Review_ (March 1869), brought evidence from Harvey's
Latin writings which shows that he was distinguished by quite other
qualities than the pedantry and conceit usually associated with his
name. He desired to be "epitaphed as the Inventour of the English
Hexameter," and was the prime mover in the literary clique that desired
to impose on English verse the Latin rules of quantity. In a "gallant,
familiar letter" to M. Immerito (Edmund Spenser) he says that Sir Edward
Dyer and Sir Philip Sidney were helping forward "our new famous
enterprise for the exchanging of Barbarous and Balductum Rymes with
Artificial Verses." The document includes a tepid appreciation of the
_Faerie Queene_ which had been sent to him for his opinion, and he gives
examples of English hexameters illustrative of the principles enunciated
in the correspondence. The opening lines--
"What might I call this Tree? A Laurell? O bonny Laurell
Needes to thy bowes will I bow this knee, and vayle my bonetto"--
afford a fair sample of the success of Harvey's metrical experiments,
which presented a fair mark for the wit of Thomas Nashe. "He (Harvey)
goes twitching and hopping in our language like a man running upon
quagmires, up the hill in one syllable, and down the dale in another,"
says Nashe in _Strange Newes_, and he mimics him in the mocking couplet:
"But eh! what news do you hear of that good Gabriel Huffe-Snuffe,
Known to the world for a foole, and clapt in the Fleete for a Runner?"
Harvey exercised great influence over Spenser for a short time, and the
friendship lasted even though Spenser's genius refused to be bound by
the laws of the new prosody. Harvey is the Hobbinoll of his friend's
_Shepheards Calender_, and into his mouth is put the beautiful song in
the fourth eclogue in praise of Eliza. If he was really the author of
the verses "To the Learned Shepheard" signed "Hobynoll" and prefixed to
the _Faerie Queene_, he was a good poet spoiled. But Harvey's genuine
friendship for Spenser shows the best side of a disposition
uncompromising and quarrelsome towards the world in general. In 1573
ill-will against him in his college was so strong that there was a delay
of three months before the fellows would agree to grant him the
necessary grace for his M.A. degree. He became reader in rhetoric about
1576, and in 1578, on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth's visit to Sir
Thomas Smith at Audley End, he was appointed to dispute publicly before
her. In the next year he wrote to Spenser complaining of the
unauthorized publication of satirical verses of his which were supposed
to reflect on high personages, and threatened seriously to injure
Harvey's career. In 1583 he became junior proctor of the university, and
in 1585 he was elected master of Trinity Hall, of which he had been a
fellow from 1578, but the appointment appears to have been quashed at
court. He was a protege of the Earl of Leicester, to whom he introduced
Spenser, and this connexion may account for his friendship with Sir
Philip Sidney. But in spite of patronage, a second application for the
mastership of Trinity Hall failed in 1598. In 1585 he received the
degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford, and is found practising
at the bar in London. Gabriel's brother, Richard, had taken part in the
Marprelate controversy, and had given offence to Robert Greene by
contemptuous references to him and his fellow wits. Greene retorted in
his _Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ with some scathing remarks on the
Harveys, the worst of which were expunged in later editions, drawing
attention among other things to Harvey's modest parentage. In 1599
Archbishop Whitgift made a raid on contemporary satire in general, and
among other books the tracts of Harvey and Nashe were destroyed, and it
was forbidden to reprint them. Harvey spent the last years of his life
in retirement at his native place, dying in 1630.
His extant Latin works are: _Ciceronianus_ (1577); _G. Harveii rhetor,
sive 2 dierum oratio de natura, arte et exercitatione rhetorica_
(1577); _Smithus, vel Musarum lachrymae_ (1578), in honour of Sir
Thomas Smith; and _G. Harveii gratulationum Valdensium libri quatuour_
(sic), written on the occasion of the queen's visit to Audley End
(1578). _The Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, A.D. 1573-80_ (1884, ed.
E. J. L. Scott, Camden Society), contains rough drafts of the
correspondence between Spenser and Harvey, letters relative to the
disputes at Pembroke Hall, and an extraordinary correspondence dealing
with the pursuit of his sister Mercy by a young nobleman. A copy of
Quintilian (1542), in the British Museum, is extensively annotated by
Gabriel Harvey. After Greene's death Harvey published _Foure Letters
and certaine Sonnets_ (1592), in which in a spirit of righteous
superiority he laid bare with spiteful fulness the miserable details
of Greene's later years. Thomas Nashe, who in power of invective and
merciless wit was far superior to Harvey, took upon himself to avenge
Greene's memory, and at the same time settle his personal account with
the Harveys, in _Strange Newes_ (1593). Harvey refuted the personal
charges made by Nashe in _Pierce's Supererogation, or a New Prayse Of
the Old Asse ..._ (1593). In _Christes Teares_ over Jerusalem (1593)
Nashe made a full apology to Harvey, who refused to be appeased, and
resumed what had become a very scurrilous controversy in a _New Letter
of Notable Contents_ (1593). Nashe thereupon withdrew his apology in a
new edition (1594) of _Christes Teares_, and hearing that Harvey had
boasted of victory he produced the most biting satire of the series in
_Have with you to Saffron Walden_ (1596). Harvey retorted in _The
Trimming of Thomas Nashe Gentleman, by the high-tituled patron Don
Richardo de Medico campo ..._ (1597).
His complete works were edited by Dr A. B. Grosart with a "Memorial
Introduction" for the _Huth Library_ (1884-1885). See also Isaac
Disraeli, on "Literary Ridicule," in _Calamities of Authors_ (ed.
1840); T. Warton's _History of English Poetry_ (ed. W. C. Hazlitt,
1871); J. P. Collier's _Bibliographical and Critical Account of the
Rarest Books in the English Language_ (1865), and the _Works_ of
Thomas Nashe.
HARVEY, SIR GEORGE (1806-1876), Scottish painter, the son of a
watchmaker, was born at St Ninians, near Stirling, in February 1806.
Soon after his birth his parents removed to Stirling, where George was
apprenticed to a bookseller. His love for art having, however, become
very decided, in his eighteenth year he entered the Trustees' Academy
at Edinburgh. Here he so distinguished himself that in 1826 he was
invited by the Scottish artists, who had resolved to found a Scottish
academy, to join it as an associate. Harvey's first picture, "A Village
School," was exhibited in 1826 at the Edinburgh Institution; and from
the time of the opening of the Academy in the following year he
continued annually to exhibit. His best-known pictures are those
depicting historical episodes in religious history from a puritan or
evangelical point of view, such as "Covenanters Preaching,"
"Covenanters' Communion," "John Bunyan and his Blind Daughter," "Sabbath
Evening," and the "Quitting of the Manse." He was, however, equally
popular in Scotland for subjects not directly religious; and "The
Bowlers," "A Highland Funeral," "The Curlers," "A Schule Skailin'," and
"Children Blowing Bubbles in the Churchyard of Greyfriars', Edinburgh,"
manifest the same close observation of character, artistic conception
and conscientious elaboration of details. In "The Night Mail" and "Dawn
Revealing the New World to Columbus" the aspects of nature are made use
of in different ways, but with equal happiness, to lend impressiveness
and solemnity to human concerns. He also painted landscapes and
portraits. In 1829 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Scottish
Academy; in 1864 he succeeded Sir J. W. Gordon as president; and he was
knighted in 1867. He died at Edinburgh on the 22nd of January 1876.
Sir George Harvey was the author of a paper on the "Colour of the
Atmosphere," read before the Edinburgh Royal Society, and afterwards
published with illustrations in _Good Words_; and in 1870 he published
a small volume entitled _Notes of the Early History of the Royal
Scottish Academy. Selections from the Works of Sir George Harvey,
P.R.S.A., described by the Rev. A. L. Simpson, F.S.A. Scot., and
photographed by Thomas Annan_, appeared at Edinburgh in 1869.
HARVEY, WILLIAM (1578-1657), English physician, the discoverer of the
circulation of the blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey, a
prosperous Kentish yeoman, and was born at Folkestone on the 1st of
April 1578. After passing through the grammar school of Canterbury, on
the 31st of May 1593, having just entered his sixteenth year, he became
a pensioner of Caius College, Cambridge, at nineteen he took his B.A.
degree, and soon after, having chosen the profession of medicine, he
went to study at Padua under H. Fabricius and Julius Casserius. At the
age of twenty-four Harvey became doctor of medicine, in April 1602.
Returning to England in the first year of James I., he settled in
London; and two years later he married the daughter of Dr Lancelot
Browne, who had been physician to Queen Elizabeth. In the same year he
became a candidate of the Royal College of Physicians, and was duly
admitted a fellow (June 1607). In 1609 he obtained the reversion of the
post of physician to St Bartholomew's hospital. His application was
supported by the king himself and by Dr Henry Atkins (1558-1635), the
president of the college, and on the death of Dr Wilkinson in the course
of the same year he succeeded to the post. He was thrice censor of the
college, and in 1615 was appointed Lumleian lecturer.
In 1616 he began his course of lectures, and first brought forward his
views upon the movements of the heart and blood. Meantime his practice
increased, and he had the lord chancellor, Francis Bacon, and the earl
of Arundel among his patients. In 1618 he was appointed physician
extraordinary to James I., and on the next vacancy physician in ordinary
to his successor. In 1628, the year of the publication of the
_Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis_, he was elected
treasurer of the College of Physicians, but at the end of the following
year he resigned the office, in order, by command of Charles I., to
accompany the young duke of Lennox (James Stuart, afterwards duke of
Richmond) on his travels. He appears to have visited Italy, and returned
in 1632. Four years later he accompanied the earl of Arundel on his
embassy to the emperor Ferdinand II. He was eager in collecting objects
of natural history, sometimes causing the earl anxiety for his safety by
his excursions in a country infested by robbers in consequence of the
Thirty Years' War. In a letter written on this journey, he says: "By the
way we could scarce see a dogg, crow, kite, raven, or any bird, or
anything to anatomise; only sum few miserable people, the reliques of
the war and the plague, whom famine had made anatomies before I came."
Having returned to his practice in London at the close of the year 1636,
he accompanied Charles I. in one of his journeys to Scotland (1639 or
1641). While at Edinburgh he visited the Bass Rock; he minutely
describes its abundant population of sea-fowl in his treatise _De
generatione_, and incidentally speaks of the account then credited of
the solan goose growing on trees as a fable. He was in attendance on the
king at the battle of Edgehill (October 1642), where he withdrew under a
hedge with the prince of Wales and the duke of York (then boys of twelve
and ten years old), "and took out of his pocket a book and read. But he
had not read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the
ground near him, which made him remove his station," as he afterwards
told John Aubrey. After the indecisive battle, Harvey followed Charles
I. to Oxford, "where," writes the same gossiping narrator, "I first saw
him, but was then too young to be acquainted with so great a doctor. I
remember he came several times to our college (Trinity) to George
Bathurst, B.D. who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which they
opened daily to see the progress and way of generation." In Oxford he
remained three years, and there was some chance of his being superseded
in his office at St Bartholomew's hospital, "because he hath withdrawn
himself from his charge, and is retired to the party in arms against the
Parliament." It was no doubt at this time that his lodgings at Whitehall
were searched, and not only the furniture seized but also invaluable
manuscripts and anatomical preparations.[1]
While with the king at Oxford he was made warden of Merton College, but
a year later, in 1646, that city surrendered to Fairfax, and Harvey
returned to London. He was now sixty-eight years old, and, having
resigned his appointments and relinquished the cares of practice, lived
in learned retirement with one or other of his brothers. It was in his
brother Daniel's house at Combe that Dr (afterwards Sir George) Ent, a
faithful friend and disciple (1604-1689), visited him in 1650. "I found
him," he says, "with a cheerful and sprightly countenance investigating,
like Democritus, the nature of things. Asking if all were well with
him--'How can that be,' he replied, 'when the state is so agitated with
storms and I myself am yet in the open sea? And indeed, were not my mind
solaced by my studies and the recollection of the observations I have
formerly made, there is nothing which should make me desirous of a
longer continuance. But thus employed, this obscure life and vacation
from public cares which would disgust other minds is the medicine of
mine.'" The work on which he had been chiefly engaged at Oxford, and
indeed since the publication of his treatise on the circulation in 1628,
was an investigation into the recondite but deeply interesting subject
of generation. Charles I. had been an enlightened patron of Harvey's
studies, had put the royal deer parks at Windsor and Hampton Court at
his disposal, and had watched his demonstration of the growth of the
chick with no less interest than the movements of the living heart.
Harvey had now collected a large number of observations, though he would
probably have delayed their publication. But Ent succeeded in obtaining
the manuscripts, with authority to print them or not as he should find
them. "I went from him," he says, "like another Jason in possession of
the golden fleece, and when I came home and perused the pieces singly,
I was amazed that so vast a treasure should have been so long hidden."
The result was the publication of the _Exercitationes de generatione_
(1651).
This was the last of Harvey's labours. He had now reached his
seventy-third year. His theory of the circulation had been opposed and
defended, and was now generally accepted by the most eminent anatomists
both in his own country and abroad. He was known and honoured throughout
Europe, and his own college (Caius) voted a statue in his honour (1652)
_viro monumentis suis immortali_. In 1654 he was elected to the highest
post in his profession, that of president of the college; but the
following day he met the assembled fellows, and, declining the honour
for himself on account of the infirmities of age, recommended the
re-election of the late president Dr Francis Prujean (1593-1666). He
accepted, however, the office of consiliarius, which he again held in
the two following years. He had already enriched the college with other
gifts besides the honour of his name. He had raised for them "a noble
building of Roman architecture (rustic work with Corinthian pilasters),
comprising a great parlour or conversation room below and a library
above"; he had furnished the library with books, and filled the museum
with "simples and rarities," as well as with specimens of instruments
used in the surgical and obstetric branches of medicine. At last he
determined to give to his beloved college his paternal estate at
Burmarsh in Kent. His wife had died some years before, his brothers were
wealthy men, and he was childless, so that he was defrauding no heir
when, in July 1656, he made the transfer of this property, then valued
at L56 per annum, with provision for a salary to the college librarian
and for the endowment of an annual oration, which is still given on the
anniversary of the day. The orator, so Harvey orders in his deed of
gift, is to exhort the fellows of the college "to search out and study
the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and also for the honour of
the profession to continue mutual love and affection among themselves."
Harvey, like his contemporary and great successor Thomas Sydenham, was
long afflicted with gout, but he preserved his activity of mind to an
advanced age. In his eightieth year, on the 3rd of June 1657, he was
attacked by paralysis, and though deprived of speech was able to send
for his nephews and distribute his watch, ring, and other personal
trinkets among them. He died the same evening, "the palsy giving him an
easy passport," and was buried with great honour in his brother Eliab's
vault at Hempstead in Essex, _annorum et famae satur_. In 1883 the lead
coffin containing his remains was enclosed in a marble sarcophagus and
moved to the Harvey chapel within the church.
John Aubrey, to whom we owe most of the minor particulars about Harvey
which have been preserved, says: "In person he was not tall, but of the
lowest stature, round faced, olivaster complexion, little eyes, round,
very black, full of spirits; his hair black as a raven, but quite white
twenty years before he died." The best portrait of him extant is by
Cornelius Jansen in the library of the College of Physicians, one of
those rescued from the great fire, which destroyed their original hall
in 1666. It has been often engraved, and is prefixed to the fine edition
of his works published in 1766.
_Harvey's Work on the Circulation._--In estimating the character and
value of the discovery announced in the _Exercitatio de motu cordis et
sanguinis_, it is necessary to bear in mind the previous state of
knowledge on the subject. Aristotle taught that in man and the higher
animals the blood was elaborated from the food in the liver, thence
carried to the heart, and sent by it through the veins over the body.
His successors of the Alexandrian school of medicine, Erasistratus and
Herophilus, further elaborated his system, and taught that, while the
veins carried blood from the heart to the members, the arteries carried
a subtle kind of air or spirit. For the practical physician only two
changes had been made in this theory of the circulation between the
Christian era and the 16th century. Galen had discovered that the
arteries were not, as their name implies, merely air-pipes, but that
they contained blood as well as vital air or spirit. And it had been
gradually ascertained that the nerves ([Greek: neura]) which arose from
the brain and conveyed "animal spirits" to the body were different from
the tendons or sinews ([Greek: neura]) which attach muscles to bones.
_First_, then, the physicians of the time of Thomas Linacre knew that
the blood is not stagnant in the body. So did Shakespeare and Homer, and
every augur who inspected the entrails of a victim, and every village
barber who breathed a vein. Plato even uses the expression to [Greek: to
aima kata panta ta mele sphodros peripheresthai]. But no one had a
conception of a continuous stream returning to its source (a circulation
in the true sense of the word) either in the system or in the lungs. If
they used the word _circulatio_, as did Caesalpinus,[2] it was as
vaguely as the French policeman cries "Circulez." The movements of the
blood were in fact thought to be slow and irregular in direction as well
as in speed, like the "circulation" of air in a house, or the
circulation of a crowd in the streets of a city. _Secondly_, they
supposed that one kind of blood flowed from the liver to the right
ventricle of the heart, and thence to the lungs and the general system
by the veins, and that another kind flowed from the left ventricle to
the lungs and general system by the arteries. _Thirdly_, they supposed
that the septum of the heart was pervious and allowed blood to pass
directly from the right to the left side. _Fourthly_, they had no
conception of the functions of the heart as the motor power of the
movement of the blood. They doubted whether its substance was muscular;
they supposed its pulsation to be due to expansion of the spirits it
contained; they believed the only dynamic effect which it had on the
blood to be sucking it in during its active diastole, and they supposed
the chief use of its constant movements to be the due mixture of blood
and spirits.
Of the great anatomists of the 16th century, Sylvius (_In Hipp. et Gal.
phys. partem anatom. isagoge_) described the valves of the veins;
Vesalius (_De humani corporis fabrica_, 1542) ascertained that the
septum between the right and left ventricles is complete, though he
could not bring himself to deny the invisible pores which Galen's system
demanded. Servetus, in his _Christianismi restitutio_ (1553), goes
somewhat farther than his fellow-student Vesalius, and says: "Paries
ille medius non est aptus ad communicationem et elaborationem illam;
licet aliquid resudare possit"; and, from this anatomical fact and the
large size of the pulmonary arteries he concludes that there is a
communication in the lungs by which blood passes from the pulmonary
artery to the pulmonary vein: "Eodem artificio quo in hepate fit
transfusio a vena porta ad venam cavam propter sanguinem, fit etiam in
pulmone transfusio a vena arteriosa ad arteriam venosam propter
spiritum." The natural spirit of the left side and the vital spirit of
the right side of the heart were therefore, he concluded, practically
the same, and hence two instead of three distinct _spiritus_ should be
admitted. It seems doubtful whether even Servetus rightly conceived of
the entire mass of the blood passing through the pulmonary artery and
the lungs. The transference of the _spiritus naturalis_ to the lungs,
and its return to the left ventricle as _spiritus vitalis_, was the
function which he regarded as important. Indeed a true conception of the
lesser circulation as a transference of the whole blood of the right
side to the left was impossible until the corresponding transference in
the greater or systematic circulation was discovered. Servetus, however,
was the true predecessor of Harvey in physiology, and his claims to that
honour are perfectly authentic and universally admitted.[3]
The way then to Harvey's great work had been paved by the discovery of
the valves in the veins, and by that of the lesser circulation--the
former due to Sylvius and Fabricius, the latter to Servetus--but the
significance of the valves was unsuspected and the fact of even the
pulmonary circulation was not generally admitted in its full meaning.
In his treatise Harvey proves (1) that it is the contraction, not the
dilatation, of the heart which coincides with the pulse, and that the
ventricles as true muscular sacs squeeze the blood which they contain
into the aorta and pulmonary artery; (2) that the pulse is not produced
by the arteries enlarging and so filling, but by the arteries being
filled with blood and so enlarging; (3) that there are no pores in the
septum of the heart, so that the whole blood in the right ventricle is
sent to the lungs and round by the pulmonary veins to the left
ventricle, and also that the whole blood in the left ventricle is again
sent into the arteries, round by the smaller veins into the venae cavae,
and by them to the right ventricle again--thus making a complete
"circulation"; (4) that the blood in the arteries and that in the veins
is the same blood; (5) that the action of the right and left sides of
the heart, auricles, ventricles and valves, is the same, the mechanism
in both being for reception and propulsion of liquid and not of air,
since the blood on the right side, though mixed with air, is still
blood; (6) that the blood sent through the arteries to the tissues is
not all used, but that most of it runs through into the veins; (7) that
there is no to and fro undulation in the veins, but a constant stream
from the distant parts towards the heart; (8) that the dynamical
starting-point of the blood is the heart and not the liver.
The _method_ by which Harvey arrived at his complete and almost
faultless solution of the most fundamental and difficult problem in
physiology has been often discussed, and is well worthy of attention. He
begins his treatise by pointing out the many inconsistencies and defects
in the Galenical theory, quoting the writings of Galen himself, of
Fabricius, Columbus and others, with great respect, but with unflinching
criticism. For, in his own noble language, wise men must learn anatomy,
not from the decrees of philosophers, but from the fabric of nature
herself, "nec ita in verba jurare antiquitatis magistrae, ut veritatem
amicam in apertis relinquant, et in conspectu omnium deserant." He had,
as we know, not only furnished himself with all the knowledge that books
and the instructions of the best anatomists of Italy could give, but, by
a long series of dissections, had gained a far more complete knowledge
of the comparative anatomy of the heart and vessels than any
contemporary--we may almost say than any successor--until the times of
John Hunter and J. F. Meckel. Thus equipped, he tells us that he began
his investigations into the movements of the heart and blood by looking
at them--i.e. by seeing their action in living animals. After a modest
preface, he heads his first chapter "Ex vivorum dissectione, qualis sit
cordis motus." He minutely describes what he saw and handled in dogs,
pigs, serpents, frogs and fishes, and even in slugs, oysters, lobsters
and insects, in the transparent _minima squilla_, "quae Anglice dicitur
_a shrimp_," and lastly in the chick while still in the shell. In these
investigations he used a _perspicillum_ or simple lens. He particularly
describes his observations and experiments on the ventricles, the
auricles, the arteries and the veins. He shows how the arrangement of
the vessels in the foetus supports his theory. He adduces facts observed
in disease as well as in health to prove the rapidity of the
circulation. He explains how the mechanism of the valves in the veins is
adapted, not, as Fabricius believed, to moderate the flow of blood from
the heart, but to favour its flow to the heart. He estimates the
capacity of each ventricle, and reckons the rate at which the whole mass
of blood passes through it. He elaborately and clearly demonstrates the
effect of obstruction of the blood-stream in arteries or in veins, by
the forceps in the case of a snake, by a ligature on the arm of a man,
and illustrates his argument by figures. He then sums up his conclusion
thus: "Circulari quodam motu, in circuitu, agitari in animalibus
sanguinem, et esse in perpetuo motu; et hanc esse actionem sive
functionem cordis quam pulsu peragit; et omnino motus et pulsus cordis
causam unam esse." Lastly, in the 15th, 16th and 17th chapters, he adds
certain confirmatory evidence, as the effect of position on the
circulation, the absorption of animal poisons and of medicines applied
externally, the muscular structure of the heart and the necessary
working of its valves. The whole treatise, which occupies only 67 pages
of large print in the quarto edition of 1766, is a model of accurate
observation, patient accumulation of facts, ingenious experimentation,
bold yet cautious hypothesis and logical deduction.
In one point only was the demonstration of the circulation incomplete.
Harvey could not discover the capillary channels by which the blood
passes from the arteries to the veins. This gap in the circulation was
supplied several years later by the great anatomist Marcello Malpighi,
who in 1661 saw in the lungs of a frog, by the newly invented
microscope, how the blood passes from the one set of vessels to the
other. Harvey saw all that could be seen by the unaided eye in his
observations on living animals; Malpighi, four years after Harvey's
death, by another observation on a living animal, completed the splendid
chain of evidence. If this detracts from Harvey's merit it leaves
Servetus no merit at all. But in fact the existence of the channels
first seen by Malpighi was as clearly pointed to by Harvey's reasoning
as the existence of Neptune by the calculations of Leverrier and of
Adams.
Harvey himself and all his contemporaries were well aware of the
novelty and importance of his theory. He says in the admirable letter
to Dr Argent, president of the College of Physicians, which follows
the dedication of his treatise to Charles I., that he should not have
ventured to publish "a book which alone asserts that the blood pursues
its course and flows back again by a new path, contrary to the
received doctrine taught so many ages by innumerable learned and
illustrious men," if he had not set forth his theory for more than
nine years in his college lectures, gradually brought it to
perfection, and convinced his colleagues by actual demonstrations of
the truth of what he advanced. He anticipates opposition, and even
obloquy or loss, from the novelty of his views. These anticipations,
however, the event proved to have been groundless. If we are to credit
Aubrey indeed, he found that after the publication of the _De motu_
"he fell mightily in his practice; 'twas believed by the vulgar that
he was crackbrained, and all the physicians were against him." But the
last assertion is demonstrably untrue; and if apothecaries and
patients ever forsook him, they must soon have returned, for Harvey
left a handsome fortune. By his own profession the book was received
as it deserved. So novel a doctrine was not to be accepted without due
inquiry, but his colleagues had heard his lectures and seen his
demonstrations for years; they were already convinced of the truth of
his theory, urged its publication, continued him in his lectureship,
and paid him every honour in their power. In other countries the book
was widely read and much canvassed. Few accepted the new theory; but
no one dreamt of claiming the honour of it for himself, nor for
several years did any one pretend that it could be found in the works
of previous authors. The first attack on it was a feeble tract by one
James Primerose, a pupil of Jean Riolan (_Exerc. et animadv. in libr.
Harvei de motu cord. et sang._, 1630). Five years later Parisanus, an
Italian physician, published his _Lapis Lydius de motu cord. et
sang_. (Venice, 1635), a still more bulky and futile performance.
Primerose's attacks were "imbellia pleraque" and "sine ictu"; that of
Parisanus "in quamplurimis turpius," according to the contemporary
judgment of Johann Vessling. Their dulness has protected them from
further censure. Caspar Hoffmann, professor at Nuremberg, while
admitting the truth of the lesser circulation in the full Harveian
sense, denied the rest of the new doctrine. To him the English
anatomist replied in a short letter, still extant, with great
consideration yet with modest dignity, beseeching him to convince
himself by actual inspection of the truth of the facts in question. He
concludes: "I accept your censure in the candid and friendly spirit in
which you say you wrote it; do you also the same to me, now that I
have answered you in the same spirit." This letter is dated May 1636,
and in that year Harvey passed through Nuremberg with the earl of
Arundel, and visited Hoffmann. But he failed to convince him; "nec
tamen valuit Harveius vel coram," writes P. M. Schlegel, who, however,
afterwards succeeded in persuading the obstinate old Galenist to
soften his opposition to the new doctrine, and thinks that his
complete conversion might have been effected if he had but lived a
little longer--"nec dubito quin concessisset tandem in nostra castra."
While in Italy the following year Harvey visited his old university of
Padua, and demonstrated his views to Professor Vessling. A few months
later this excellent anatomist wrote him a courteous and sensible
letter, with certain objections to the new theory. The answer to this
has not been preserved, but it convinced his candid opponent, who
admitted the truth of the circulation in a second letter (both were
published in 1640), and afterwards told a friend, "Harveium nostrum si
audis, agnosces coelestem sanguinis et spiritus ingressum ex arteriis
per venas in dextrum cordis sinum." Meanwhile a greater convert, R.
Descartes, in his _Discours sur la methode_ (1637) had announced his
adhesion to the new doctrine, and refers to "the English physician to
whom belongs the honour of having first shown that the course of the
blood in the body is nothing less than a kind of perpetual movement in
a circle." J. Walaeus of Leyden, H. Regius of Utrecht and Schlegel of
Hamburg successively adopted the new physiology. Of these professors,
Regius was mauled by the pertinacious Primerose and mauled him in
return (_Spongia qua eluuntur sordes quae Jac. Primirosius_, &c., and
_Antidotum adv. Spongiam venenatam Henr. Regii_). Descartes afterwards
repeated Harvey's vivisections, and, more convinced than ever,
demolished Professor V. F. Plempius of Louvain, who had written on the
other side. George Ent also published an _Apologia pro circulatione
sanguinis_ in answer to Parisanus.
At last Jean Riolan ventured to publish his _Enchiridium anatomicum_
(1648), in which he attacks Harvey's theory, and proposes one of his
own. Riolan had accompanied the queen dowager of France (Maria de'
Medici) on a visit to her daughter at Whitehall, and had there met
Harvey and discussed his theory. He was, in the opinion of the
judicious Haller, "vir asper et in nuperos suosque coaevos immitis ac
nemini parcens, nimis avidus suarum laudum praeco, et se ipso fatente
anatomicorum princeps." Harvey replied to the _Enchiridium_ with
perfectly courteous language and perfectly conclusive arguments, in
two letters _De circulatione sanguinis_, which were published at
Cambridge in 1649, and are still well worth reading. He speaks here of
the "circuitus sanguinis a me inventus." Riolan was unconvinced, but
lived to see another professor of anatomy appointed in his own
university who taught Harvey's doctrines. Even in Italy, Trullius,
professor of anatomy at Rome, expounded the new doctrine in 1651. But
the most illustrious converts were Jean Pecquet of Dieppe, the
discoverer of the thoracic duct, and of the true course of the lacteal
vessels, and Thomas Bartholinus of Copenhagen, in his _Anatome ex
omnium veterum recentiorumque observationibus, imprimis
institutionibus beati mei parentis Caspari Bartholini, ad
circulationem Harveianam et vasa lymphatica renovata_ (Leiden, 1651).
At last Plempius also retracted all his objections; for, as he
candidly stated, "having opened the bodies of a few living dogs, I
find that all Harvey's statements are perfectly true." Hobbes of
Malmesbury could thus say in the preface to his _Elementa
philosophiae_ that his friend Harvey, "solus quod sciam, doctrinam
novam superata invidia vivens stabilivit."
It has been made a reproach to Harvey that he failed to appreciate the
importance of the discoveries of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels by
G. Aselli, J. Pecquet and C. Bartholinus. In three letters on the
subject, one to Dr R. Morison of Paris (1652) and two to Dr Horst of
Darmstadt (1655), a correspondent of Bartholin's, he discusses these
observations, and shows himself unconvinced of their accuracy. He
writes, however, with great moderation and reasonableness, and excuses
himself from investigating the subject further on the score of the
infirmities of age; he was then above seventy-four. The following
quotation shows the spirit of these letters: "Laudo equidem summopere
Pecqueti aliorumque in indaganda veritate industriam singularem, nec
dubito quin multa adhuc in Democriti puteo abscondita sint, a venturi
saeculi indefatigabili diligentia expromenda." Bartholin, though
reasonably disappointed in not having Harvey's concurrence, speaks of
him with the utmost respect, and generously says that the glory of
discovering the movements of the heart and of the blood was enough for
one man.
_Harvey's Work on Generation._--We have seen how Dr. Ent persuaded his
friend to publish this book in 1651. It is between five and six times as
long as the _Exerc. de motu cord. et sang._, and is followed by excursus
_De partu, De uteri membranis, De conceptione_; but, though the fruit of
as patient and extensive observations, its value is far inferior. The
subject was far more abstruse, and in fact inaccessible to proper
investigation without the aid of the microscope. And the field was
almost untrodden since the days of Aristotle. Fabricius, Harvey's
master, in his work _De formatione ovi et pulli_ (1621), had alone
preceded him in modern times. Moreover, the seventy-two chapters which
form the book lack the co-ordination so conspicuous in the earlier
treatise, and some of them seem almost like detached chapters of a
system which was never completed or finally revised.
Aristotle had believed that the male parent furnished the body of the
future embryo, while the female only nourished and formed the seed;
this is in fact the theory on which, in the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus,
Apollo obtains the acquittal of Orestes. Galen taught almost as
erroneously that each parent contributes seeds, the union of which
produced the young animal. Harvey, after speaking with due honour of
Aristotle and Fabricius, begins rightly "ab ovo"; for, as he remarks,
"eggs cost little and are always and everywhere to be had," and
moreover "almost all animals, even those which bring forth their young
alive, and man himself, are produced from eggs" ("omnia omnino
animalia, etiam vivipara, atque hominem adeo ipsum, ex ovo progigni").
This dictum, usually quoted as "omne vivurn ex ovo," would alone stamp
this work as worthy of the discoverer of the circulation of the blood,
but it was a prevision of genius, and was not proved to be a fact
until K. E. von Baer discovered the mammalian ovum in 1827. Harvey
proceeds with a careful anatomical description of the ovary and
oviduct of the hen, describes the new-laid egg, and then gives an
account of the appearance seen on the successive days of incubation,
from the 1st to the 6th, the 10th and the 14th, and lastly describes
the process of hatching. He then comments upon and corrects the
opinions of Aristotle and Fabricius, declares against spontaneous
generation (though in one passage he seems to admit the current
doctrine of production of worms by putrefaction as an exception),
proves that there is no _semen foemineum_, that the chalazae of the
hen's eggs are not the _semen galli_, and that both parents contribute
to the formation of the egg. He describes accurately the first
appearance of the ovarian ova as mere specks, their assumption of yelk
and afterwards of albumen. In chapter xlv. he describes two methods of
production of the embryo from the ovum: one is _metamorphosis_, or the
direct transformation of pre-existing material, as a worm from an egg,
or a butterfly from an _aurelia_ (chrysalis); the other is
_epigenesis_, or development with addition of parts, the true
generation observed in all higher animals. Chapters xlvi.-l. are
devoted to the abstruse question of the efficient cause of generation,
which, after much discussion of the opinions of Aristotle and of
Sennertius, Harvey refers to the action of both parents as the
efficient instruments of the first great cause.[4] He then goes on to
describe the order in which the several parts appear in the chick. He
states that the _punctum saliens_ or foetal heart is the first organ
to be seen, and explains that the nutrition of the chick is not only
effected by yelk conveyed directly into the midgut, as Aristotle
taught, but also by absorption from yelk and white by the umbilical
(omphalomeseraic) veins; on the fourth day of incubation appear two
masses (which he oddly names _vermiculus_), one of which develops into
three vesicles, to form the cerebrum, cerebellum and eyes, the other
into the breastbone and thorax; on the sixth or seventh day come the
viscera, and lastly, the feathers and other external parts. Harvey
points out how nearly this order of development in the chick agrees
with what he had observed in mammalian and particularly in human
embryos. He notes the bifid apex of the foetal heart in man and the
equal thickness of the ventricles, the soft cartilages which represent
the future bones, the large amount of liquor amnii and absence of
placenta which characterize the foetus in the third month; in the
fourth the position of the testes in the abdomen, and the uterus with
its Fallopian tubes resembling the uterus bicornis of the sheep; the
large thymus; the caecum, small as in the adult, not forming a second
stomach as in the pig, the horse and the hare; the lobulated kidneys,
like those of the seal ("_vitulo_," sc. _marino_) and porpoise, and
the large suprarenal veins, not much smaller than those of the kidneys
(li.-lvi). He failed, however, to trace the connexion of the urachus
with the bladder. In the following chapters (lxiii.-lxxii.) he
describes the process of generation in the fallow deer or the roe.
After again insisting that all animals arise from ova, that a
"conception" is an internal egg and an egg an extruded conception, he
goes on to describe the uterus of the doe, the process of
impregnation, and the subsequent development of the foetus and its
membranes, the _punctum saliens_, the cotyledons of the placenta, and
the "uterine milk," to which Sir William Turner recalled attention in
later years. The treatise concludes with detached notes on the
placenta, parturition and allied subjects.
_Harvey's other Writings and Medical Practice._--The remaining writings
of Harvey which are extant are unimportant. A complete list of them will
be found below, together with the titles of those which we know to be
lost. Of these the most important were probably that on respiration, and
the records of post-mortem examinations. From the following passage (_De
partu_, p. 550) it seems that he had a notion of respiration being
connected rather with the production of animal heat than, as then
generally supposed, with the cooling of the blood. "Haec qui diligenter
perpenderit, naturamque aeris diligenter introspexerit, facile opinor
fatebitur eundem nec refrigerationis gratia nec in pabulum animalibus
concedi. Haec autem obiter duntaxat de respiratione diximus, proprio
loco de eadem forsitan copiosius disceptaturi."
Of Harvey as a practising physician we know very little. Aubrey tells us
that "he paid his visits on horseback with a foot-cloth, his man
following on foot, as the fashion then was." He adds--"Though all of his
profession would allow him to be an excellent anatomist, I never heard
any that admired his therapeutic way. I knew several practitioners that
would not have given threepence for one of his bills" (the apothecaries
used to collect physicians' prescriptions and sell or publish them to
their own profit), "and that a man could hardly tell by his bill what he
did aim at." However this may have been,--and rational therapeutics was
impossible when the foundation stone of physiology had only just been
laid,--we know that Harvey was an active practitioner, performing such
important surgical operations as the removal of a breast, and he turned
his obstetric experience to account in his book on generation. Some good
practical precepts as to the conduct of labour are quoted by Percivall
Willughby (1596-1685). He also took notes of the anatomy of disease;
these unfortunately perished with his other manuscripts. Otherwise we
might regard him as a forerunner of G. B. Morgagni; for Harvey saw that
pathology is but a branch of physiology, and like it must depend first
on accurate anatomy. He speaks strongly to this purpose in his first
epistle to Riolan: "Sicut enim sanorum et boni habitus corporum
dissectio plurimum ad philosophiam et rectam physiologiam facit, ita
corporum morbosorum et cachecticorum inspectio potissimum ad pathologiam
philosophicam." The only specimen we have of his observations in morbid
anatomy is his account of the post-mortem examination made by order of
the king on the body of the famous Thomas Parr, who died in 1635, at the
reputed age of 152. Harvey insists on the value of physiological truths
for their own sake, independently of their immediate utility; but he
himself gives us an interesting example of the practical application of
his theory of the circulation in the cure of a large tumour by tying the
arteries which supplied it with blood (_De generat._ Exerc. xix.).
The following is believed to be a complete list of all the known
writings of Harvey, published and unpublished:--
_Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis_, 4to
(Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1628); _Exercitationes duae anatomicae de
circulatione sanguinis, ad Johannem Riolanum, filium, Parisiensem_
(Cambridge, 1649); _Exercitationes de generatione animalium, quibus
accedunt quaedam de partu, de membranis ac humoribus uteri, et de
conceptione_, 4to (London, 1651); _Anatomia Thomae Parr_, first
published in the treatise of Dr John Betts, _De ortu et natura
sanguinis_, 8vo (London, 1669). Letters: (1) to Caspar Hoffmann of
Nuremberg, May 1636; (2) to Schlegel of Hamburg, April 1651; (3) three
to Giovanni Nardi of Florence, July 1651, Dec. 1653 and Nov. 1655; (4)
two to Dr Morison of Paris, May 1652; (5) two to Dr Horst of
Darmstadt, Feb. 1654-1655 and July 1655; (6) to Dr Vlackveld of
Haarlem, May 1657. His letters to Hoffmann and Schlegel are on the
circulation; those to Morison, Horst and Vlackveld refer to the
discovery of the lacteals; the two to Nardi are short letters of
friendship. All these letters were published by Sir George Ent in his
collected works (Leiden, 1687). Of two MS. letters, one on official
business to the secretary Dorchester was printed by Dr Aveling, with a
facsimile of the crabbed handwriting (_Memorials of Harvey_, 1875),
and the other, about a patient, appears in Dr Robert Willis's _Life of
Harvey_ (1878). _Praelectiones anatomiae universalis per me Gul.
Harveium medicum Londinensem, anat. et chir. professorem, an. dom._
(1616), _aetat._ 37,--MS. notes of his Lumleian lectures in
Latin,--are in the British Museum library; an autotype reproduction
was issued by the College of Physicians in 1886. An account of a
second MS. in the British Museum, entitled _Gulielmus Harveius de
musculis, motu locali_, &c., was published by Sir G. E. Paget (_Notice
of an unpublished MS. of Harvey_, London, 1850). The following
treatises, or notes towards them, were lost either in the pillaging of
Harvey's house, or perhaps in the fire of London, which destroyed the
old College of Physicians: _A Treatise on Respiration_, promised and
probably at least in part completed (pp. 82, 550, ed. 1766);
_Observationes de usu Lienis_; _Observationes de motu locali_, perhaps
identical with the above-mentioned manuscript; _Tractatum
physiologicum_; _Anatomia medicalis_ (apparently notes of morbid
anatomy); _De generatione insectorum_. The fine 4to edition of
Harvey's Works, published by the Royal College of Physicians in 1766,
was superintended by Dr Mark Akenside; it contains the two treatises,
the account of the post-mortem examination of old Parr, and the six
letters enumerated above. A translation of this volume by Dr Willis,
with Harvey's will, was published by the Sydenham Society, 8vo
(London, 1849).
The following are the principal biographies of Harvey: in Aubrey's
_Letters of Eminent Persons_, &c., vol. ii. (London, 1813), first
published in 1685, the only contemporary account; in Bayle's
_Dictionnaire historique et critique_ (1698 and 1720; Eng. ed., 1738);
in the _Biographia Britannica_, and in Aitken's _Biographical
Memoirs_; the Latin Life by Dr Thomas Lawrence, prefixed to the
college edition of Harvey's _Works_ in 1766; memoir in _Lives of
British Physicians_ (London, 1830); a Life by Dr Robert Willis,
founded on that by Lawrence, and prefixed to his English edition of
Harvey in 1847; the much enlarged Life by the same author, published
in 1878; the biography by Dr William Munk in the _Roll of the College
of Physicians_, vol. i. (2nd ed., 1879).
The literature which has arisen on the great discovery of Harvey, on
his methods and his merits, would fill a library. The most important
contemporary writings have been mentioned above. The following list
gives some of the most remarkable in modern times: the article in
Bayle's dictionary quoted above; _Anatomical Lectures_, by Wm. Hunter,
M.D. (1784); Sprengell, _Geschichte der Arzneikunde_ (Halle, 1800),
vol. iv.; Flourens, _Histoire de la circulation_ (1854); Lewes,
_Physiology of Common Life_ (1859), vol. i. pp. 291-345; Ceradini, _La
Scoperta della circolazione del sangue_ (Milan, 1876); Tollin, _Die
Entdeckung des Blutkreislaufs durch Michael Servet_ (Jena, 1876);
Kirchner, _Die Entdeckung des Blutkreislaufs_ (Berlin, 1878); Willis,
in his Life of Harvey; Wharton Jones, "Lecture on the Circulation of
the Blood," _Lancet_ for Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, 1879; and the various
_Harveian Orations_, especially those by Sir E. Sieveking, Dr Guy and
Professor George Rolleston. (P. H. P.-S.)