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THE
SYDENHAM SOCIETY
INSTITUTED
MDCCCXLIII
[Illustration]
LONDON
MDCCCXLVII.
PRINTED BY C. AND J. ADLARD,
BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
THE WORKS
OF
WILLIAM HARVEY, M.D.
PHYSICIAN TO THE KING, PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY AND SURGERY
TO THE COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN
WITH
A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR
BY
ROBERT WILLIS, M.D.
MEMBER OF THE ROYAL COLLEGES OF PHYSICIANS AND SURGEONS OF ENGLAND,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF
GÖTTINGEN, OF THE IMPERIAL SOCIETY OF PHYSICIANS
AND SURGEONS OF VIENNA, AND OF THE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA,
ETC. ETC.
LONDON
PRINTED FOR THE SYDENHAM SOCIETY
MDCCCXLVII.
PREFACE.
When, at the instance of the governing body of the Sydenham Society, I
undertook to edit the Works of the immortal Discoverer of the
Circulation of the Blood, in English, I believed that the chief of these
Works were already extant in our language, in such a shape as would make
little more from an editor necessary than a careful revision of the
text. I had unwarily adopted the idea, very gratuitously originated by
Aubrey, that Harvey was what is called an indifferent scholar, and that
the English versions of his writings were the proper originals, the
Latin versions the translations. Having access to the handsome edition
of Harvey’s Works in Latin, revised by Drs. Lawrence and Mark Akenside,
and published by the College of Physicians in 1766, I had always
referred to that when the course of my studies led me to consult Harvey.
Of the English versions, or any other edition, I knew little or nothing.
On proceeding to my new duty of English editor, however, I immediately
saw that the masterwork of Harvey on the MOTIONS of the HEART and BLOOD,
far from having the character of an originally English writing, must
have been rendered into English by one but little conversant with the
subject, that it was both extremely rebutting in point of style and full
of egregious errors, and that nothing short of an entirely new
translation could do justice to this admirable treatise, or secure for
it, at the present day, the attention it deserved. Full of zeal, and
making of my task a labour of love, I had soon completed a new
translation of the Exercises on the Heart and Blood, with equal pleasure
and profit to myself.
The work on GENERATION came next under review. The English version of
this I had heard it positively asserted was the original, was Harvey’s
own; here therefore my business of editor would properly begin. But I
had not gone through a couple of pages of the text, before difficulties
like those already experienced met me again. That the statement above
referred to was erroneous, speedily became apparent; and a little
inquiry enabled me to discover that the English version of the Exercises
on Generation was the work of a physician named Llewellen. Though not
incorrect generally, there was, nevertheless, a great deal that I wished
had been otherwise rendered; and then the scientific and professional
language of two centuries back looked strangely when examined by the
eye, and had an unusual sound when tried upon the ear. Only anxious to
present to my brethren in the most appropriate and attractive form
possible, the writings of him who had still met me in his Works and with
his contemplative look in his Portrait as a kind of divinity in
medicine, I even girded myself up for the long and laborious enterprise
of translating anew into our mother tongue the work on Generation, and
at length achieved my task, not without difficulty.
The short paper on the ANATOMY of THOMAS PARR appears in the
Philosophical Transactions in English; but it stands there as a
translation; and having now translated so much myself, I even thought it
would be well to translate that also, and so it was achieved.
The LETTERS, though frequently quoted, have never appeared in English
before. They will be found both highly interesting and important. To
render them was a light and pleasant task.--In a word, the English
reader is now presented with an entirely new translation of the writings
of William Harvey; everything of our illustrious countryman worthy of
publication that has come down to us, being here included.[1]
The reader will perceive that I have abstained from annotation and
commentary in the course of my labour. The purpose of the Council of the
Sydenham Society, as I understood it, was to give the Works of William
Harvey in English now, as he himself gave them in Latin two centuries
ago. Entirely approving of this intention, I felt that anything like
corrections of statements and opinions, which could so readily have been
made under the lights of modern physiology, would have been
impertinencies, and I therefore abstained from them. To have carried out
and completed the history of Harvey’s two grand subjects, would also
have been easy; but this would have been almost as obviously out of
place as commentary, and the inclination towards such an agreeable
undertaking was also resisted.
It appeared, nevertheless, that the Works of our great physiological
discoverer might be advantageously prefaced by some account of his Life
and Writings. One great motive with me, indeed, for undertaking the
office of Editor of the Works of Harvey was, that I might thus find a
fitting opportunity for writing his life, a task which, in other
circumstances than those that now surround me, it had still been a
cherished purpose with me to perform. The Life of Harvey, by one who had
maintained a familiarity with anatomy and physiology, had always seemed
to me a desideratum in our medical literature.
This portion of my work I have only achieved with an effort, and at
something like disadvantage. Incessantly engaged by night and by day in
the laborious and responsible duties of a country practice, enjoying
nothing of learned leisure, but snatching from the hours that should
rightfully be given to rest, the time that was necessary to composition,
remote too from means of information which I must nevertheless send for
and consult--for I could not draw entirely upon memory and old
recollections of Harvey, I have been much longer about this work than
its length might indicate. In spite of many disadvantages, however, I
trust it will be found that I have included everything of moment in my
narrative of the life of Harvey; that I have set his claims to the whole
and sole merit of the discovery of the Circulation in a new and clearer
light than they have yet been seen; and that I have done more than any
preceding biographer in exhibiting his moral nature; for truly he was as
noble in nature as he was intellectually great.
The Wills of great men have always been looked on as calculated to throw
light on the character of their authors; and I have, therefore, great
pleasure in presenting to the medical world, for the first time, the
Will of William Harvey.
It only remains for me, in conclusion, to explain and to apologise for
the long delay that has taken place in the appearance of this volume.
The work was, in fact, nearly three-fourths done more than a year ago;
but with the change made in my sphere of action about that time, all
aptitude for literary labour seemed to forsake me,--the bow, to use a
common metaphor, became unbent, and for a while resisted every effort to
string it anew; and, then, when restrung at length, how constantly was I
hindered in my purpose to use it! With this brief explanation, which
will be so well appreciated by the great majority of my fellow members
of the Sydenham Society, I confidently throw myself on their kind
consideration, and pray them to pardon the delay that has occurred.
R. WILLIS.
BARNES, SURREY;
_Feb. 15th, 1847_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface v
Life of William Harvey xv
Last Will and Testament of William Harvey lxxxv
AN ANATOMICAL DISQUISITION ON THE MOTION OF THE
HEART AND BLOOD IN ANIMALS.
Dedication 3
Introduction 9
CHAPTER
I. The author’s motives for writing 19
II. Of the Motions of the Heart, as seen in the Dissection of
Living Animals 21
III. Of the Motions of Arteries, as seen in the Dissection of
Living Animals 24
IV. Of the Motion of the Heart and its Auricles, as seen in the Bodies
of Living Animals 26
V. Of the Motion, Action, and Office of the Heart 31
VI. Of the Course by which the Blood is carried from the Vena Cava
into the Arteries, or from the Right into the Left Ventricle of
the Heart 35
VII. The Blood percolates the Substance of the Lungs from the Right
Ventricle of the Heart into the Pulmonary Veins and Left
Ventricle 40
VIII. Of the Quantity of Blood passing through the Heart from the
Veins to the Arteries; and of the Circular Motion of the
Blood 45
IX. That there is a Circulation of the Blood is confirmed from the
first proposition 48
X. The First Position: of the Quantity of Blood passing from the
Veins to the Arteries. And that there is a Circuit of the
Blood, freed from objections, and farther confirmed by Experiment 52
XI. The Second Position is demonstrated 54
XII. That there is a Circulation of the Blood is shown from the
Second Position demonstrated 60
XIII. The Third Position is confirmed: and the Circulation of the
Blood is demonstrated from it 62
XIV. Conclusion of the Demonstration of the Circulation 68
XV. The Circulation of the Blood is further confirmed by probable
reasons ib.
XVI. The Circulation of the Blood is further proved from certain
consequences 71
XVII. The Motion and Circulation of the Blood are confirmed from the
particulars apparent in the Structure of the Heart, and from
those things which Dissection unfolds 75
THE FIRST ANATOMICAL DISQUISITION ON THE CIRCULATION
OF THE BLOOD, ADDRESSED TO JOHN RIOLAN 89
A SECOND DISQUISITION TO JOHN RIOLAN; IN WHICH
MANY OBJECTIONS TO THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD
ARE REFUTED 109
ANATOMICAL EXERCISES ON THE GENERATION OF ANIMALS; TO
WHICH ARE ADDED, ESSAYS ON PARTURITION; ON THE MEMBRANES,
AND FLUIDS OF THE UTERUS; AND ON CONCEPTION.
PAGE
Dedication 145
Introduction 151
Of the manner and order of acquiring knowledge 154
Of the same matters, according to Aristotle 158
Of the method to be pursued in studying Generation 163
ON ANIMAL GENERATION.
Wherefore we begin with the history of the hen’s egg 169
Of the seat of generation 171
Of the upper part of the hen’s uterus, or the ovary 172
Of the infundibulum 179
Of the external portion of the uterus of the common fowl 180
Of the uterus of the fowl 190
Of the abdomen of the common fowl and of other birds 195
Of the situation and structure of the remaining parts of the
fowl’s uterus 198
Of the extrusion of the egg, or parturition of the fowl, in general 201
Of the increase and nutrition of the egg 202
Of the covering or shell of the egg 204
Of the remaining parts of the egg 211
Of the diversities of eggs 216
Of the production of the chick from the egg of the hen 225
The first examination of the egg; or of the effect of the first
day’s incubation upon the egg 228
Second inspection of the egg 232
The third inspection of the egg 234
The fourth inspection of the egg 243
The fifth inspection of the egg 252
The sixth inspection 256
The inspection after the tenth day 257
The inspection after the fourteenth day 259
Of the exclusion of the chick, or the birth from the egg 264
Of twin-bearing eggs 268
Certain deductions from the preceding history of the egg 270
Of the nature of the egg ib.
The egg is not the product of the uterus, but of the vital
principle 279
The egg is not produced without the hen 284
Of the manner, according to Aristotle, in which a perfect and
fruitful egg is produced by the male and female fowl 287
Of the uses of this disquisition on fecundity 291
The egg is not produced by the cock and hen in the way Aristotle
would have it 293
Nor in the manner imagined by physicians 294
The male and the female are alike efficient in the business of
generation 296
Of the matter of the egg, in opposition to the Aristotelians and
the medical writers 297
In how far is the fowl efficient in the generation of the egg,
according to Aristotle? And wherefore is the concurrence of the
male required? 300
The perfect hen’s egg is of two colours 303
Of the manner in which the egg is increased by the albumen 305
Of what the cock and hen severally contribute to the production of
the egg 307
Of the cock and the particulars most remarkable in his constitution 309
Of the hen 313
Of the sense in which the hen may be called the “prime efficient:”
and of her parturition 318
Of the manner in which the generation of the chick takes place from
the egg 323
In how many ways the chick may be said to be formed from the egg 325
Fabricius is mistaken with regard to the matter of the generation
of the chick in ovo 327
What is the material of the chick, and how it is formed in the egg 333
Of the efficient cause of the generation of the chick and fœtus 340
Of the manner in which the efficient cause of the chick acts,
according to Aristotle 344
The opinion of Fabricius on the efficient cause of the chick
is refuted 350
The inquiry into the efficient cause of the chick is one of
great difficulty 355
Of the efficient cause of animals, and its conditions 360
Of the order of generation; and, first, of the primary genital
particle 372
Of the blood as prime element in the body 379
Of the inferences deducible from the course of the umbilical
vessel in the egg 392
Of the order of the parts in generation from an egg, according to
Fabricius 397
Of the order of the parts according to Aristotle 407
Of the order of the parts in generation as it appears from
observation 414
Of certain paradoxes and problems to be considered in connexion
with this subject 423
Of the nutrition of the chick in ovo 434
Of the uses of the entire egg 442
Of the uses of the yelk and albumen 444
Of the uses of the other parts of the egg 454
An egg is the common origin of all animals 456
Of the generation of viviparous animals 461
The generation of viviparous animals in general is illustrated from
the history of that of the hind and doe, and the reason of this
selection 466
Of the uterus of the hind and doe 467
Of the intercourse of the hind and doe 474
Of the constitution or change that takes place in the uterus of the
deer in the course of the month of September 476
Of what takes place in the month of October 478
Of what takes place in the uterus of the doe during the month of
November 482
Of the conception of the deer in the course of the month of
December 492
Of the innate heat 501
Of the primigenial moisture 513
ON PARTURITION 521
OF THE UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS 551
Of the Humours 557
Of the Membranes 560
Of the Placenta 563
Of the Acetabula 566
Of the Umbilical Cord 567
ON CONCEPTION 573
ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR 589
LETTERS.
PAGE
To Caspar Hofmann, M.D. 595
To Paul Marquard Slegel, of Hamburg 596
To the very excellent John Nardi, of Florence 603
In reply to R. Morison, M.D., of Paris 604
To the most excellent and learned John Nardi, of Florence 610
To John Daniel Horst, principal Physician of Hesse-Darmstadt 612
To the distinguished and learned John Dan. Horst, principal
Physician at the Court of Hesse-Darmstadt 613
To the very learned John Nardi, of Florence, a man distinguished
alike for his virtues, life, and erudition 615
To the distinguished and accomplished John Vlackveld, Physician of
Harlem 616
THE LIFE OF WILLIAM HARVEY, M.D.
William Harvey, the immortal discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood,
was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey and Joan Halke, of Folkstone, in
Kent, where he was born on the 1st of April, 1578.[3] Of the parents of
Harvey, little is known. His father, in our printed accounts, is
generally designated Gentleman,[4] and must have been in easy
circumstances; inasmuch as he had a numerous family, consisting of seven
sons and two daughters, all the males of which he felt himself competent
to launch upon life in courses that imply the possession of money
wealth. William, the first-born, adopted the profession of physic. Five
of his brothers,--Thomas, Daniel, Eliab, Michael, and Matthew--were
merchants, and not merchants in a small and niggardly way--non tenues et
sordidi, as Dr. Lawrence has it in his Life of Harvey,[5] but of weight
and substance--magni et copiosi, trading especially with Turkey or the
Levant, then the main channel through which the wealth of the East
flowed into Europe. The Harveys were undoubtedly men of consideration in
the city of London, and several of them, in the end, became possessed
of the most ample independent fortunes.[6] The son, whose name does not
appear in the list given above, was John, the immediate junior to
William. He, too, was a man of note in his day, having been one of the
King’s receivers for Lincolnshire, having sat as member of parliament
for Hythe, and for some time held the office of King’s footman. Of the
two sisters--Sarah died young; of the fate of Anne, or Amy, nothing is
known.
Great men seem, in almost all authenticated instances, to have had
noble-minded women for their mothers. We have not a word of his age or
generation to assist us in forming an estimate of Harvey’s male
progenitor; but the inscription on his mother’s monumental tablet, in
Folkstone church, assures us that she, at least, was a woman of such
mark and likelihood, that it was held due to her memory to leave her
moral portrait to posterity in these beautiful words, penned, it may be,
by her illustrious eldest son:
“A.D. 1605, Nov. 8th, dyed in yᵉ 50th yeere of her age,
JOAN, Wife of THO: HARVEY. Mother of 7 Sones & 2 Daughters.
A Godly harmles Woman: A chaste loveing Wife:
A charitable quiet Neighbour: A co~fortable frendly Matron:
A p~ovident diligent Huswyfe: A careful te~der-harted Mother.
Deere to her Husband; Reverensed of her Children:
Beloved of her Neighbours: Elected of God.
Whose Soule Rest in Heaven: her Body in this Grave:
To Her a Happy Advantage: to Hers an Unhappy Loss.”
Epitaphs may not always be authorities implicitly to be relied on; but
we unhesitatingly accept of everything to the credit of William Harvey’s
mother as a portion of our faith.
At ten years of age, Harvey was put to the grammar school of Canterbury,
having, doubtless, already imbibed the rudiments of his English
education at home under the eye of his excellent mother. In the grammar
school of Canterbury he was, of course, initiated into a knowledge of
the Latin and Greek languages--the routine practice then as now; and
there he seems to have remained until he was about fifteen years of age.
At sixteen he was removed to Caius-Gonvil College, Cambridge,[7] where
he spent from three to four years in the study of classics, dialectics,
and physics, such discipline being held peculiarly calculated to fit the
mind of the future physician for entering on the study of the difficult
science of medicine. At nineteen (1597) he took his degree of B.A. and
quitted the University. Cambridge, in Harvey’s time, was a school of
logic and divinity rather than of physic. Then, even as at the present
day, the student of physic obtained the principal part of his medical
education from another than his alma mater. In the 16th and 17th
centuries, France and Italy boasted medical schools of higher repute
than any in Europe; and to one or other of these must the young
Englishman who dedicated himself to physic repair, in order to furnish
himself with the lore that was indispensable in his profession. Harvey
chose Italy; and Padua, about the year 1598, numbering such men as
Fabricius of Aquapendente, Julius Casserius, and Jo. Thomas Minadous
among its professors, Harvey’s preference of that school was well
founded. There, then, it was, under these and other able masters, that
our Harvey drank in the elementary knowledge which served him as a
foundation for that induction which has made his name immortal; for
without detracting from the glory of Harvey, but merely in recognizing
the means to an end, we may admit that, but for the lessons of his
master, Fabricius, Harvey might have passed through life, not unnoticed,
indeed,--for such as Harvey was in himself, he must still have been
remarkable,--but his name unconnected with one of the most admirable and
useful inferences ever given to the world.
Having passed five years at Padua, Harvey, then in the twenty-fourth
year of his age (1602), finally obtained his diploma as doctor of
physic, with licence to practise and to teach arts and medicine in every
land and seat of learning. Having returned to England in the course of
the same year, and submitted to the requisite forms, he also received
his doctor’s degree from his original University of Cambridge; and then
coming to London, and taking to himself a wife in his six and twentieth
year, he entered on the practice of his profession.
History is all but silent in regard to the woman of our great
anatomist’s choice. We only know that she was the daughter of a
physician of the day, Dr. Lancelot Browne, and that Harvey’s union with
her proved childless. He himself mentions his wife incidentally as
having a remarkable pet parrot, which must also, if we may infer so much
from the pains he takes in specifying its various habits and
accomplishments, have been a particular favorite of his own.[8]
In 1604, Harvey joined the College of Physicians, his name appearing on
the roll of candidates for the fellowship in that year; and three years
afterwards, 1607, the term of his probation having passed, he was duly
admitted to the distinction to which he aspired.
We do not now lose sight of Harvey for any length of time: for a number
of years, in the beginning of his career, he was probably occupied, like
young physicians of the present day, among the poor in circumstance and
afflicted in body, taking vast pains without prospect of pecuniary
reward, but actuated by the ennobling sense of lightening the sum of
human misery, and carried away, uncaring personal respects, by that
ardent love of his profession which distinguishes every true votary of
the art medical. Harvey, however, had not only zeal, talents, and
accomplishments; he had, what was no less needful to success: powerful
friends, united brothers, with the will and the ability to help him
forward in the career he had chosen.
In the beginning of 1609, he made suit for the reversion of the office
of physician to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, then held by Dr. Wilkinson,
and backing his suit by such powerful missives as the king’s letters
recommendatory to the governors of the house, and farther, producing
testimonials of competency from Dr. Adkinson, President of the College
of Physicians, and others, his petition was granted, and he was
regularly chosen physician in futuro of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Dr.
Wilkinson having died in the course of the year, Harvey was first
appointed to discharge the physician’s duties ad interim, and by and by
he was formally elected to the vacant office, 14th October, 1609.
In his new position Harvey must have found ample scope for acquiring
tact and readiness in the practical details of his profession; though
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in his day appears to have borne a nearer
resemblance to the dispensary of these times than to the hospital as we
now understand the term. Harvey was now in his thirty-second year, and,
brought before the public at so suitable an age, in an office of such
responsibility, he must soon have risen into eminence as a physician
and come into practice. Harvey, indeed, appears subsequently to have
been physician to many of the most distinguished men of his age, among
others to the Lord Chancellor Bacon, to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel,
&c.
In the year 1615, Harvey, then in the thirty-seventh year of his age,
was happily chosen to deliver the lectures on anatomy and surgery at the
College of Physicians, founded by Dr. Richard Caldwal, and it is
generally allowed that in the very first course he gave, which commenced
in the month of April of the following year, he presented a detailed
exposition of the views concerning the circulation of the blood, which
have made his name immortal. Long years had indeed been labouring at the
birth which then first saw the light; civilized Europe, ancient and
modern, had been slowly contributing and accumulating materials for its
production; Harvey at length appeared, and the idea took fashion in his
mind and emerged complete, like Pallas, perfect from the brain of Jove.
The circulation, it would seem, continued to form one of the subjects in
the lectures on anatomy, which Harvey went on delivering for many years
afterwards at the College of Physicians; but it was not till 1628 that
he gave his views to the world at large in his celebrated treatise on
the ‘Motion of the Heart and Blood,’[9] having already, as he tells us
in his preface, for nine years and more, gone on demonstrating the
subject before his learned auditory, illustrating it by new and
additional arguments, and freeing it from the objections raised by the
skilful among anatomists.
Some few years after his appointment as their lecturer by the College of
Physicians, Harvey must have been chosen one of the physicians
extraordinary to the reigning sovereign, James I. The fame of Harvey’s
new views of the motions of the heart and blood could not but speedily
have reached the wide-open ears of King James, and this of itself, to
lay no stress on the powerful city interest of the illustrious
anatomist, might suffice to ensure him such a mark of distinction as
that just named. Of the precise date of his appointment as physician
extraordinary to the king we are not informed; but in the letter of
James bearing date the 3d of February, 1623, it is spoken of as a thing
foregone--that had taken place some time ago; for in this letter Doctor
Harvey is charged in common with the physicians in ordinary, with the
care of the king’s health; and he is further guaranteed the reversion of
the office of ordinary physician whenever, by death or otherwise, a
vacancy should occur. To the promised dignity, however, Harvey did not
attain for several years, not till after the demise of James, and when
Charles had already occupied the throne of his father for some five or
six years.
Harvey may now be said to have become rather closely connected with the
court; but whether this connexion proved truly advantageous to him as a
philosopher and physiologist may fairly be questioned. The time and
service which the court physician must necessarily give to royalty and
greatness interfere materially with the leisure and privacy that are
indispensable to study and meditation. But Harvey, who appears to have
been a man of singular self-possession, not to be diverted from his
purpose by trifling or merely ceremonial considerations, always speaks
of his master Charles in terms of unfeigned love and respect; and
everything induces us to believe that Charles in turn loved and honoured
his physician. The sovereign seems even to have taken a remarkable
interest in the inquiries of the physiologist; to have had several
exhibitions prepared of the punctum saliens in the embryo chick and
deer, and to have witnessed the dissections of many of the does which he
so liberally placed at Harvey’s disposal whilst the anatomist was
prosecuting his inquiries into the subject of generation. Whatever the
defects in Charles’s public and political character, he must always be
admitted to have been a man of elegant tastes, and of amiable temper and
refined manners in private. It was certainly worthy of the Prince who
appreciated, whilst he commanded, the talents of a Vandyke and a Rubens,
that he also prized and encouraged the less brilliant, but not less
useful genius of a Harvey.
Harvey, as a physician, must now have been at the zenith of his
reputation; he was physician in ordinary to the king, and we have seen
him in the same position towards some of the foremost men of the age.
His general practice, too, must have been extensive, and, if we look at
the sum he is stated to have left behind him in money, his emoluments
large. But he had not any lengthened harvest for all his early pains;
his connexion with the court by and by came in the way of his continuing
to improve his position; and then, grievous to relate, the appearance of
the admirable Exercises on the Heart and Blood gave a decided and severe
check to his professional prosperity. John Aubrey tells us he had “heard
him (Harvey) say, that after his book on the ‘Circulation of the Blood’
came out, he fell mightily in his practice; ’twas believed by the vulgar
that he was crack-brained, and all the physitians were against him.”[10]
Writing many years afterwards, when the causes particularly indicated
above had conspired to make Harvey’s practice less, Aubrey informs us
further, that “though all his profession would allow him to be an
excellent anatomist, I never heard any that admired his therapeutique
way. I knew several practitioners in this town that would not have given
threepence for one of his bills (prescriptions), and [who said] that a
man could hardly tell by his bills what he did aim at.”[11] So has it
mostly been with those who have added to the sum of human knowledge!
The empiric under the title of the practical man, in his unsuspecting
ignorance, sets himself up and is admitted as arbiter wherever there is
difficulty: blind himself, he leads the blinded multitude the way he
lists. He who laid the foundation of modern medical science lost his
practice for his pains, and the routineer, with an appropriate salve for
every sore, a pill and potion for each particular ache and ail, would
not give threepence for one of his prescriptions! did not admire his
therapeutique way!! and could not tell what he did aim at!!! Ignorance
and presumption have never hesitated to rend the veil that science and
modesty, all in supplying the means, have still owned their inability to
raise. If Harvey faltered, who of his contemporaries could rightfully
presume to walk secure? And yet did each and all of them, unconscious of
the darkness, tread their twilight paths assuredly; whilst he, the
divinity among them, with his eyes unsealed, felt little certain of his
way. So has it still been with medicine; and the world must make many a
lusty onward stride in knowledge before it can be otherwise.
The first interruption to his ordinary professional pursuits and
avocations which Harvey seems to have suffered through his connexion
with the court, occurred in the beginning of 1630, when he was engaged
“to accompany the young Duke of Lenox in his travels beyond seas.” In
anticipation of a removal from London, apparently, Harvey had already,
in December 1629, resigned his office of treasurer to the College of
Physicians, which he seems to have filled for several years.
Of the course of Harvey’s travels with the Duke of Lenox we have not
been able to gain any information. Their way probably led them to the
Continent, and it may have been on this occasion and in this company
that he visited Venice, as we know from himself that he did in the
course of one of his journeys. Harvey must have been in England again in
1632 and 1633; for in the former year he was formally chosen physician
to Charles, and in the latter we find his absence, “by reason of his
attendance on the king’s majesty,” from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital
complained of by the surgeons of that institution, and Dr. Andrews
appointed by the governors as his substitute, but “without prejudice to
him in his yearly fee or in any other respect.”[12] Such considerate
treatment satisfies us of the esteem in which Harvey was held.
In the early part of 1633 Charles determined to visit his ancient
kingdom of Scotland, for the ostensible purpose of being crowned King of
Scots. Upon this occasion Harvey accompanied him, as matter of course,
we may presume. But the absence of the court from London was not of long
duration; and in the early autumn of the same year we are pleased to
find Harvey again at his post in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, engaged in
his own province and propounding divers rules and regulations for the
better government of the house and its officers,[13] which of themselves
give us an excellent insight into the state of the hospital, as well as
of the relative positions of the several departments of the healing art
two centuries ago. The doctor’s treatment of the poor chirurgeons in
these rules is sufficiently despotic it must be admitted; but the
chirurgeons in their acquiescence showed that they merited no better
handling. The only point on which they proved restive, indeed, was the
revealment of their SECRETS to the physician; a great outrage in days
when every man had his secrets, and felt fully justified in keeping them
to himself. But surgery in the year 1633 had not shown any good title to
an independent existence. The surgeon of those days was but the hand or
instrument of the physician; the dignitary mostly applied to his famulus
when he required a wen removed, or a limb lopped, or a broken head
plastered; though Harvey it seems did not feel himself degraded by
taking up the knife or practising midwifery.[14] Nevertheless, in these
latter days Royal Colleges of Physicians have been seen arrogating
superiority over Royal Colleges of Surgeons, and Royal Colleges both of
Physicians and Surgeons combining to keep the practitioner of obstetrics
under.
From the year 1633 Harvey appears to have devoted much of his time to
attendance upon the king and retainers of the court, so that we have
little or no particular information of his movements for several years.
We know, however, from Aubrey, that he accompanied Thomas Howard, Earl
of Arundel, whose physician he was, in his extraordinary embassy to the
emperor, in the year 1636.[15] In the course of this journey, Harvey had
an opportunity of visiting several of the principal cities of Germany,
and of making the acquaintance of many of the leading medical men of the
time. The place of date of one of Harvey’s letters, that namely to
Caspar Hofmann, from Nuremberg, in the month of May, 1636, has not been
noticed; but his presence with the Earl of Arundel at once accounts for
it; and we therefore see that Harvey’s offer to demonstrate to the
distinguished professor of Nuremberg, the anatomical particulars which
made the circulation of the blood a necessary conclusion was no vain
boast, made at a distance, but a substantial proposition in presence of
his opponent, and which there is tradition at least to assure us he was
called upon to fulfil.--Harvey is reported to have made a public
demonstration of his anatomical views at Nuremberg, satisfactory to all
present save Caspar Hofmann himself; to whom, as he still continued to
urge objections, the futile nature of which we in these days can readily
understand, Harvey is further related to have deigned no other answer
than by laying down the scalpel and retiring, conduct which we find in
entire conformity with our estimate of the character of the man.[16]
On his return to England, in the winter of 1636, Harvey must have
resumed his place near the person of the sovereign, and by and by, as in
duty bound, accompanied him on his first hostile expedition into
Scotland in 1639, when matters were happily accommodated between the
King and his Scottish subjects, whom he had driven to take up arms so
righteously in defence of their religious liberties. Harvey, as
physician to the person, may be further presumed to have been with
Charles when he marched towards the Border the following year, so
memorable in the annals of English history, when the war with the Scots
was renewed, when the king’s authority received the first check at the
battle of Newbury, and when Charles, returning to his capital after his
defeat, encountered the still more formidable opposition of the English
Parliament.
Harvey may now be said to have become fairly involved with the Court.
From the total absence of his name in the transactions of the times, it
is nevertheless interesting to observe how completely he kept himself
aloof from all the intrigues and dealings of the party with which he
was connected. He must have held himself exclusively to the discharge of
his professional duties. In the course of these he doubtless attended
Charles in his third visit to Scotland in the summer of 1641, when he
essayed the arts of diplomacy with little better effect than he had
already attempted the weight of prerogative in the first, and the force
of arms in the second visit.
On returning to London in the autumn of the same year, Charles soon
brought matters to a crisis between himself and his English subjects, in
the persons of their representatives, and nothing soon remained for him
but to unfurl his standard and proclaim himself at war with his people.
This was accordingly done in the course of the ensuing summer. But the
Parliament did not yet abandon a seeming care of the royal person, and
Harvey informs us himself, that he now attended the king, not only with
the consent, but by the desire, of the parliament. The battle of
Edge-hill, which followed, and in which the sun of fortune shone with a
partial and fitful gleam upon the royal arms, is especially interesting
to us from our Harvey having been present, though he still took no part
in the affair, and seems indeed to have felt very little solicitude
either about its progress or its issue, if the account of Aubrey may be
credited. “When King Charles,” says Aubrey, “by reason of the tumults,
left London, he (Harvey) attended him, and was at the fight of Edge-hill
with him; and during the fight the Prince and Duke of York were
committed to his care. He told me that he withdrew with them under a
hedge, and tooke out of his pockett a booke and read. But he had not
read very long before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground neare
him, which made him remove his station.”[17] The act of reading a book
pending an important battle, the result of which was greatly to
influence his master’s fortunes, certainly shows a wonderful degree of
coolness and a remarkable indifference to everything like military
matters. Harvey’s own candid character, and the confidence so obviously
reposed in him when he was intrusted with the care of the Prince and the
Duke of York, forbid us to interpret the behaviour into any lukewarmness
or indifference as to the issue; but Harvey, throughout his whole
career, was a most peaceful man: he never had the least taste for
literary controversy, and can scarcely be said to have replied to any of
those who opposed his views; and in his indifference about the fight of
Edge-hill he only further shows us that he was not
“Of those who build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun,
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks.”
With his fine understanding and freedom from party and sectarian views
of every kind, he probably saw that an appeal to arms was not the way
for political right to be elicited, or for a sovereign to settle matters
with his subjects. Harvey had certainly no turn for politics,[18] and
when we refer to Aubrey we find that the fight of Edge-hill was hardly
ended before our anatomist had crept back into his shell, and become
absorbed in the subjects that formed the proper business of his life. “I
first saw him (Harvey) at Oxford, 1642, after Edge-hill fight,” says our
authority, “but was then too young to be acquainted with so great a
doctor. I remember he came several times to our college (Trin.) to
George Bathurst, B.D., who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which
they opened dayly to see the progress and way of generation.” The
zealous political partisan would have found no leisure for researches
like these in such stirring times as marked the outbreak of the civil
war in England; the politician had then other than pullets’ eggs to
hatch.
The king’s physician, not to speak of the author of a new doctrine of
the motions of the heart and blood, was sure to find favour in the eyes
of the high church dignitaries of Oxford; and we accordingly find that,
besides being everywhere handsomely received and entertained, Harvey had
the honorary degree of Doctor of Physic conferred on him. Oxford,
indeed, when the king and court were driven from the metropolis, which
was now wholly in the hands of the popular party, became the
head-quarters of the royal army and principal residence of the king for
several years. And here Harvey seems to have quietly settled himself
down and again turned his attention to his favorite subjects. Nor was
the honorary distinction of doctor of physic from the university, which
has been mentioned, the only mark of favour he received. Sir Nathaniel
Brent, Warden of Merton College, yielding to his natural bias, forsook
Oxford when it was garrisoned by the king, and began to take a somewhat
active part in the proceedings of the popular party; he came forward in
especial as a witness against Archbishop Laud, on the trial of that
dignitary. Merton College being thus left without a head, upon the
suggestion, as it is said, of the learned antiquary and mathematician,
John Greaves, and in virtue of a letter of the king, Harvey was elected
warden some time in the course of 1645. This appointment was doubtless
merited by Harvey for his constant and faithful service to Charles; but
it may also have been bestowed in some measure as a retort upon the
Parliament, which, the year before, had entertained a motion for the
supercession of Harvey in his office of physician to St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital.[19] Harvey, however, did not long enjoy his new office or its
emoluments; for Oxford having surrendered to the Parliamentary forces
under Fairfax the following year, Harvey, of course, resigned his
charge, and immediately afterwards betook himself to London. Sir
Nathaniel Brent, on the contrary, returned to Oxford; and the star of
the Parliamentarians being now in the ascendant, Merton College was not
slow to reinstate its old Presbyterian warden in the room of its late
royalist head.[20]
From the date of the surrender of Oxford (July, 1646), Harvey followed
the fortunes of Charles no longer. Of his reasons for quitting the
service of his old master we know nothing. He probably felt anxious for
repose; at sixty-eight, which was Harvey’s age, a man begins to find
that an easy chair is a fitter resting-place than the bare ground, a
ceiled roof more suitable covering than the open sky--prospects which a
continuance of the strife held out. Harvey, besides, as we have seen,
had no stomach for contention in any shape or form, not even in the
literary arena; and he now probably resolved himself to follow the
advice he had once given to his young friend Charles Scarborough, “to
leave off gunning,”[21] and dedicate himself wholly to more congenial
pursuits. And then Charles had long made it apparent, even to the most
ardent of his adherents, that no faith was to be put in his promise, no
trust to be reposed in his royal word. The wise old man, verging on the
age of threescore years and ten, doubtless saw that it was better for
him to retire from a responsible office, now become most irksome and
thankless, and seek privacy and leisure for the remainder of his days.
These Harvey found awaiting him in the houses of his affectionate
brothers--now in the house of Eliab, in the City, or at Roehampton, and
then in the house of Daniel, in the ‘suburban’ village of Lambeth, or at
Combe near Croydon in Surrey, in each of which Harvey had his own
apartments. The Harveys appear to have been united from first to last in
the closest bonds of brotherly love,[22] and to have had a common
interest in many of their undertakings; and Eliab, as we shall see,
employed the small capital, which his brother William must have
accumulated before the civil wars broke out, to such purpose, that the
doctor actually died a rich man. With his brothers, then, retreating now
to the “leads” of the house in the heart of the metropolis, now to the
“caves” of the one at Combe, did Harvey continue to pass his days--but
not in idleness; for the work on Generation, with the subject of which
we saw him busied at Oxford several years before, must have found him in
ample occupation. Nor was the love of ease so great in William Harvey,
even at the advanced age of seventy-one, if we may credit some of the
accounts, as to hinder him from again visiting the Continent, and making
his way as far as Italy, a journey in which it is said he was attended
by his friend the accomplished scholar and gentleman, Dr. Ent.[23]
In the beginning of 1651 appeared the second of Harvey’s great works,
that, namely, On Animal Generation.[24] In this publication we have
abundant proof of our author’s unabated industry and devotion to
physiological science; and in the long and admirable letter to P. M.
Slegel, of Hamburg, written shortly after the appearance of the work, we
have pleasing evidence of the integrity of Harvey’s faculties at the
advanced age of seventy-three.
The year after the publication of the work on Generation, i. e. 1652,
when Harvey was looked up to by common consent as the most distinguished
anatomist and physician of his age, the College of Physicians came to
the resolution of placing his statue in their hall then occupying a site
at Amen-corner; and measures being immediately taken in conformity with
this purpose, it was carried into effect by the end of the year, when
the statue, with the following complimentary inscription on the
pedestal, was displayed:
GULIELMO HARVEIO
Viro monumentis suis immortali
Hoc insuper Collegium Medicorum Londinense
posuit.
Qui enim Sanguini motum
ut et
Animalibus ortum dedit,
Meruit esse
Stator Perpetuus.[25]
Harvey, in acknowledgment, it may have been, of the distinguished honour
done him by his friends and colleagues, appears about this time to have
commenced the erection at his own cost of a handsome addition to the
College of Physicians. It was, as Aubrey informs us, “a noble building
of Roman architecture (of rustic work, with Corinthian pilasters),
comprising a great parlour, a kind of convocation house for the fellows
to meet in below, and a library above. On the outside, on the frieze, in
letters three inches long, was this inscription: Suasu et cura Fran.
Prujeani, Præsidis, et Edmundi Smith, elect. inchoata et perfecta est
hæc fabrica, An. MDCLIII.”[26] Nor was Harvey content merely to erect
this building; he, further, furnished the library with books, and the
museum with numerous objects of curiosity and a variety of surgical
instruments. On the ceremony of this handsome addition to the College of
Physicians being opened, which took place on the 2d of February, 1653, a
sumptuous entertainment was provided at Harvey’s expense, at which he
received the president and fellows, and made over to them, on the spot,
his whole interest in the structure.
Dr. Prujean, the president of the college, going out of office, as
usual, at Michaelmas the next year (1654), Harvey was unanimously chosen
to fill the vacant chair. Having been absent when the election took
place, a deputation proceeded to his apartments to apprize him of the
honour his colleagues had done themselves and him, and to say that they
awaited his answer on the following day. Every act of Harvey’s public
life that has come down to us is marked not merely by propriety but by
grace. He attended the comitia or assembly of the college next day;
thanked his colleagues for the distinguished honour of which they had
thought him worthy--the honour, as he said, of filling the foremost
place among the physicians of England; but the concerns of the college,
he proceeded, were too weighty to be intrusted to one like him, laden
with years and infirm in health; and if he might be acquitted of
arrogance in presuming to give advice in such circumstances, he would
say that the college could not do better than reinstate in the authority
which he had but just laid down, their late president, Dr. Prujean,
under whose prudent management and fostering care the affairs of the
college had greatly prospered. This noble counsel had fitting response:
Harvey’s advice being adopted by general consent, Dr. Prujean was
forthwith re-elected president.
The College of Physicians were justly proud of their great associate,
and Harvey, in his turn, was undoubtedly attached to the college. Here,
indeed, as their lecturer on anatomy and surgery, he had first
propounded the views which had won him such distinguished credit in his
life, and which have left his name as a deathless word on the lips of
men; here he consorted with his nearest and dearest friends, receiving
from all those remarks of respectful consideration that were so justly
his due; and here, in fine, the first place among the first men of his
profession had been tendered to him, and gracefully declined. To a mind
like Harvey’s, and with the opportunity afforded him of making so
graceful a concession, the foremost place was certainly a higher
distinction unaccepted, than it had been enjoyed.--The excuse for
declining the office of president was not merely personal: it was not
alone that he was an old man, infirm in health, and incompetent for so
great a trust; but, the affairs of the college had greatly thriven under
the prudent management and constant care of the late president, and it
was no more than right that he who had but just laid down should be
re-established in authority.
Harvey, we have said, was childless; his wife, though we have not the
date of her death, he had certainly lost by this time. His only
surviving brother Eliab was rich; his nephews were prosperous merchants
and on the road to the independence and titles which several of them
afterwards achieved: he, therefore, determined to make the College of
Physicians not only heirs to his paternal estate, worth, at that time,
56_l._ per annum, but to bestow it on them in free gift during his life.
This purpose he carried into effect by means of a formal instrument,
which he delivered to the college in the month of July, 1656; the
special provisions in the deed settling one sum, by way of salary for
the librarian, and another sum, for the delivery of a solemn oration
annually, in commemoration of those who had approved themselves
benefactors to the college, and, by extension, who had added aught to
the sum of medical science in the course of the bygone year.[27]
Having thus accompanied Harvey over so much of the way in his mortal
career, let us, before proceeding further, briefly advert to his
WRITINGS, to the influence they had in the republic of letters during
his life-time, to the fruits they have since produced, and to the
impression still made on the mind that holds communion through their
means with the mind that dictated them so many years ago.--The
intellectual endowment of a man necessarily appears in his writings; it
is not always from them that so true a conception of his moral character
can be formed. Harvey, however, though in his long life he accomplished
but a small fraction of all his literary designs, has still left us
sufficient from which to form an estimate of him as a philosopher, as a
physiologist, and it may also be said as a man. Let us take a brief
survey of his writings, then, and wind up our account of his life with
such personal notices as we can gather from contemporaries, or as we can
infer from his own conduct and written word.
ON THE HEART AND BLOOD.
Harvey’s great work, though by no means the largest in bulk, is the one
on the Motions of the Heart and Blood. It has been said, happily, by a
recent critical writer, that “men were already practising what Bacon
came to inculcate,” viz. induction upon data carefully collected and
considered; and it would not be easy to adduce a more striking example
of the way in which ultimate rational truth is arrived at by a
succession of inferences than is contained in Harvey’s Essay on the
Heart and Blood. Had Bacon written his Novum Organum from Harvey’s work
as a text, he would scarcely have expressed himself otherwise than as he
has done, or given different rules for philosophizing than those which
he has laid down in his celebrated treatise.[28]
In his introduction, and by way of clearing the ground, Harvey exposes
the views of preceding physiologists, ancient and modern, in regard to
the motions of the heart, lungs, and blood, to the state of the
arteries, &c.--in short, he gives the accredited physiology of the
thoracic viscera, with comments, which prove it a mass of unintelligible
and irreconcilable confusion. There is room, therefore, for another
interpretation, consonant with reason and with anatomical fact, and
susceptible of demonstration by the senses. When he first essayed
himself to comprehend the motions of the heart, and to make out the uses
of the organ from the dissection of living animals, he found the subject
so beset with difficulties that he was almost inclined at one time to
say with Fracastorius, that these motions and their purpose could be
comprehended by God alone. By degrees, however, by repeating his
observations, using greater care, and giving more concentrated
attention, he at last discovers a way out of the labyrinth, and a means
of explaining simply all that had previously appeared so obscure. Hence
the occasion of his writing. Such is the burthen of the proem and first
chapter. With Harvey’s admirable work now put in an accessible shape
into his hands, we should (did we proceed with an analysis) but
anticipate the intelligent reader in the great pleasure he will have in
following the author through the different steps of his argument until
the conclusion is reached, and the inference presents itself as
inevitable, namely, that the blood must circle round and round in one
determinate course, in the body as in the lungs, incessantly. For
Harvey, it must be here observed, left the doctrine of the circulation
as an inference or induction only, not as a sensible demonstration. He
adduced certain circumstances, and quoted various anatomical facts which
made a continuous transit of the blood from the arteries into the veins,
from the veins into the arteries, a necessary consequence; but he never
saw this transit; his idea of the way in which it was accomplished was
even defective; he had no notion of the one order of sanguiferous
vessels ending by uninterrupted continuity, or by an intermediate
vascular network, in the other order. This was the demonstration of a
later day, and of one who first saw the light in the course of the very
year when Harvey’s work on the Heart was published.[29]
The appearance of Harvey’s book on the Motion of the Heart and Blood
seems almost immediately to have attracted the attention of all the
better intellects among the medical men of Europe. The subject was not
one, indeed, greatly calculated to interest the mass of mere
practitioners; had it been a book of receipts it would have had a better
chance with them; but the anatomists and physiologists and scientific
physicians would seem at once to have taken it up and canvassed its
merits. The conclusions come to in the work, there can be no question,
took the medical world by surprise; it was not prepared for such a
proposition as a ceaseless circular movement of the blood, with the
heart for the propelling organ; for the latter point, be it understood,
was even as great a novelty as the former.
Coming unexpectedly, and differing so widely from the ancient and
accepted notions, we cannot wonder that Harvey’s views were at first
rejected almost universally. The older intellects, in possession of the
seats and places of authority, regarded them as idle dreams; and upon
the faith of this conclusion, their author was set down and treated by
the vulgar as a crackbrained innovator. Two years, however, elapsed
before aught in contravention of the new doctrines saw the light, and
this came at length not from any of the more mature anatomists of
Europe--their minds were made up, the thing was absurd--but from a young
physician, of the name of Primerose, of Scottish descent, but French by
birth. Primerose had been a pupil of Joannes Riolanus, professor of
anatomy in the University of Paris; he had doubtless listened to his
master’s demonstration of the absurdity of the Harveian doctrine of the
circulation, and by and by he set himself down, by way apparently of
exercising his ingenuity, to try the question, not by fact and
experiment, but by the precepts he had imbibed from his teacher and the
texts of the ancients. The essay of Primerose[30] may be regarded as a
defence of the physiological ideas of Galen against the innovations of
Harvey. It is remarkable for any characteristic rather than that of a
candid spirit in pursuit of truth; it abounds in obstinate denials, and
sometimes in what may be termed dishonest perversions of simple matters
of fact, and in its whole course appeals not once to experiment as a
means of investigation.--Harvey, having already, and in the very outset
of his work, demonstrated the notions untenable which it was Primerose’s
purpose to reassert and defend, of course deigned him no reply; he could
never dream of going over the barren ground he had already trodden, in
the hope of convincing such an antagonist.
Æmylius Parisanus, a physician of Venice, was the next to assail the
Harveian doctrine of the circulation,[31] and still with the old
instruments,--the authority of Galen and the ancients generally.
Parisanus perceived Harvey’s views as directly contravening an
hypothesis to which he had formerly committed himself, namely, that the
spleen was the organ of sanguification and the furnisher of nutriment to
the heart; on this ground may Parisanus have been led to enter the lists
against the new opinions. But he proved a most flimsy antagonist.
Ignorant of some of the commonest points of anatomy, and frequently
misinterpreting the writer he combats, writing himself in a style the
most elaborately involved, and consequently obscure, it is frequently
difficult even to guess at his meaning. Like his countryman of the poet,
Signor Gratiano, he
“Speaks an infinite deal of nothing; more than any man in all
Venice: his reasons are two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of
chaff; you shall seek all day ere you find them; and when you have
them they are not worth the search.”
Had not Dr. Ent, in his Apology for the Circulation, given the name a
place on his title-page, Parisanus’s opposition would scarcely have
merited mention here.
Nearly at the same time with Parisanus, Caspar Hofmann, the learned and
laborious professor of Nuremberg, attracted particular attention, both
in his teaching and his writings, as the opponent of the Harveian
doctrine. The opposition here is the more remarkable from Hofmann’s
having shaken himself wholly free from the authority of Galen, and, as
Slegel says, even admitted the lesser circulation of the blood through
the lungs; but this must have been at a later period of his life, for in
his works, up to Harvey’s time, the idea he had of the motion of the
blood may be gathered from his likening it to a lake or sea agitated by
the wind, the veins being the conduits of the nutrient blood, the
arteries of the vital spirits. Hofmann was an adversary whom Harvey held
worthy of notice; and accordingly we have seen that our immortal
countryman took advantage of the opportunity, whilst attending the Earl
of Arundel and his party, to visit Hofmann at Nuremberg, and make a
demonstration of the new views before him. Unhappily this was done in
vain, for Hofmann continued unconvinced, though, towards the end of his
very long life, he did show some signs of yielding.[32]
Joannes Veslingius, professor in the University of Padua, and one of the
best anatomists of the age, about this time, addressed two letters to
Harvey, in which he politely but candidly states his objections to the
new doctrine. One great difficulty with Veslingius was the remarkable
difference between the colour of the arterial and the venous blood. It
did not seem possible to him that the fluid, which was of a bright
scarlet in the arteries, could be the same as the dark-coloured fluid
which is found in the veins. In the course of his letter, Veslingius
takes occasion to animadvert on the uncivil tone and indifferent style
of the productions of Primerose and Parisanus.[33]
But the theory of the double circulation was not now to meet with
opposition only; the comprehensive intellect that had seized and worked
that theorem to a rational demonstration was no longer to be left alone
against the world in its defence. Roger Drake, a young Englishman, had
the honour of appearing in his inaugural dissertation, proposed under
the auspices of Joannes Walæus, the distinguished professor of Leyden,
in 1639, as the enlightened advocate of the Harveian views; and in the
course of the same year, H. Regius (Leroy) also came forward at Utrecht
with certain Theses favorable to the doctrine of the circulation. Ten
years had not lessened Primerose’s enmity to Harvey and his views; for,
on the appearance of these academical essays, he speedily showed himself
again in the field as their opponent, publishing distinct
animadversions upon each of the inaugural dissertations in the course
of the year.[34] Regius (Leroy), a man of much less mind and information
than Drake, if we may decide from their works, was, in turn, not slow to
encounter Primerose;[35] and the spirit in which he did so, as well as
the temper and taste of the reply which Primerose, true to his
controversial nature, very soon produced,[36] may, to a certain extent,
be imagined from the titles of their several productions, which are
given below.
Still more illustrious advocates of the Harveian circulation presented
themselves in Werner Rolfink,[37] professor of anatomy at Jena, and the
celebrated Renatus Descartes. Rolfink, from his position and his
popularity as a teacher, had immense influence in disseminating the new
doctrine over Europe; and Descartes, under the ægis of his powerful
name, was no less effective by means of his writings.[38] Opposed in his
advocacy of the Harveian views by Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius,
professor of Louvain, Descartes made himself still more thoroughly
master of the subject, and when he next appears as its advocate, which
he does by and by, he even appeals to the experiments he had made on
living animals in support of his convictions and conclusions.
The controversy on the circulation had been carried on up to this time
abroad rather than at home; Harvey seems to have won over to his side
all the men of his own country who, by their education and acquirements,
might have been fitted to array themselves against him: his lectures at
the College of Physicians had apparently satisfied all his
contemporaries. But now one of Harvey’s own countrymen made his
appearance as the vindicator of the circulation from the
misrepresentations and misapprehensions of its adversaries. This was Dr.
afterwards Sir George Ent, a good scholar, a respectable anatomist,
conversant with physical science generally, a gentleman by his position
and profession, acquainted with all the leading men of letters and
science of his time, and in particular, enjoying the friendship of
William Harvey. Ent’s work is entitled ‘An Apology for the Circulation
of the Blood, with a Reply to Æmylius Parisanus.’[39] In his letter to
Harvey, which stands in front of the work, Ent lets it appear that he
was anxious to come before the world as the advocate of the circulation;
he first thought of making Primerose the particular object of his
animadversions, but as this opponent had already been very effectually
handled by Henry Leroy, he preferred taking Parisanus to task, the
rather as in dealing with him he could also controvert Primerose where
it was necessary.--Ent’s Apology is, undoubtedly, a learned, though
perhaps a somewhat pompous and pedantic book; still the writer
occasionally shows both wit and fancy in handling his antagonist, and
always learning enough in dealing with his subject. “Nothing, indeed,”
to quote Dr. Lawrence,[40] “can be more unlike than Parisanus and Ent;
and it is not wonderful, therefore, that one utterly ignorant of
physical science confronted by one thoroughly conversant therein--that
one, without power of utterance, opposed by one gifted with
eloquence--that one, sluggish and inert, in the hands of one active and
full of energy, should be effectually vanquished and overcome.” We may
imagine, nay, we may be certain, that Harvey was not unacquainted with
Ent’s purpose to appear as the advocate of his discovery, nor with the
Apology before it saw the light.
Having observed the appearance of certain academical dissertations in
defence of the circulation, we perceive the apostles of all new truths,
namely, the youthful, at work. Were there not successive generations of
men, the world would stand still; the death of the individual was not
merely a necessary condition to the enjoyment of life by successive
generations, but essential also to the onward progress of mankind. No
man who had attained to the age of 40 years, it is said, was found to
adopt the doctrine of the circulation; it had to win its way under the
safeguard of the Drakes and Leroys especially, that is to say, of the
youthful and unprejudiced spirits of the age.
Twenty years after the publication of the ‘Exercitatio de Motu Cordis et
Sanguinis,’ Joannes Riolanus, the younger, was delivered of his
‘Encheiridium Anatomicum’ (8vo. Lugd. Batav. 1648), in which he makes a
vain attempt to supplant the Harveian doctrine by a new and most
extraordinary one of his own, so incongruous and unlikely, that in these
days we are irresistibly led to form no very high estimate of the
intellect that could have engendered it. It looks to us, indeed, at this
time, like condescension on the part of the great English anatomist,
that he noticed the abortion of such a tyro in animal physics as the
French professor here approves himself. Harvey’s genius could surely
have felt no real respect for the illogical intellect of Riolan. But
Harvey, when he noticed Riolan’s publication, was in want of a good
occasion for a farther development of his own views; and so he seized on
the Parisian professor, respectable from his position in the university,
and as physician to the queen mother of France, and made him his
vehicle--his placard bearer. Harvey, besides, was personally acquainted
with Riolan, who had accompanied Mary de Medicis to England on a visit
to her daughter the Queen of Charles the First; on which occasion Harvey
and Riolan had even held conversations on the subject of the
circulation, to which it is said that Riolan when face to face with the
propounder, made no objection.
Riolan is by no means totally opposed to a circulation of the blood; he
would only limit it to certain arbitrary regions, into which he divides
the body: whilst it goes forward in one, it has no existence in another.
The nature of his ideas can be gathered from Harvey’s comments on them
in his First Disquisition, addressed to the Coryphæus of Anatomists, as
he politely designates the Parisian professor.
Having disposed of the original notions of the author of the
‘Encheiridium Anatomicum,’ in this first disquisition, Harvey, in his
second, returns to his own views, which he proceeds still further to
illustrate and confirm by additional arguments, observations, and
experiments. In this admirable essay, we obtain innumerable glimpses of
the clearness of Harvey’s judgment, of his admirable powers of
observation, and the diligent and excellent use he made of them; we at
the same time become aware of the great loss we have sustained through
the destruction of his Medical Observations. Riolan, in his
Encheiridium, proposed to point out in the structure of the healthy body
the seats of the various diseases, and to discuss their nature in
conformity with the opinions that had been entertained of them. This was
obviously at once a barren and an impracticable route: the matters he
had in hand could never have been other than abstractions, and his own
observations criticisms on opinions, never on facts. How much more
natural and judicious the course which Harvey proposes to himself, when
he informs us that in his ‘Medical Anatomy’ he meant, “from the many
dissections he had made of the bodies of persons worn out by serious and
strange affections, to relate how and in what way the internal organs
were changed in their situation, size, structure, figure, consistency,
and other sensible qualities, from their natural forms and appearances,
such as they are usually described by anatomists; and in what various
and remarkable ways they were affected. For even as the dissection of
healthy and well-constituted bodies contributes essentially to the
advancement of philosophy and sound physiology, so does the inspection
of diseased and cachectic subjects powerfully assist philosophical
pathology.” This was precisely what Morgagni lived, in some considerable
measure, to achieve, and it is that which it has been the business of
modern pathology, through the illustrious line of the Baillies,
Laennecs, Andrals, Louis, Cruveilhiers, Carswells, Richard Brights, and
many others, to render more and more complete.
Riolan never replied to Harvey; but neither did the Parisian Professor
attempt to vindicate his views, nor did he exhibit such candour as to
own himself otherwise convinced or converted. His doctrine had no
abettors, and never bore fruit; it stood a barren ear amidst the lusty,
green, and copious harvest, that had already sprung up and overspread
the lands.
Harvey must now, indeed, have seen his views assured of general
reception at no distant date. The same year in which he himself answered
Riolan, Dr. James de Back, of Amsterdam, published his work on the
Heart,[41] which is written entirely in harmony with the Harveian
doctrines, and the celebrated Lazarus Riverius, Professor of Medicine in
the University of Montpellier, publicly defended and taught the
circulation of the blood.[42] The following year, Paul Marquard Siegel,
of Hamburg, produced his commentary on the Motion of the Blood,[43] in
which he addresses himself particularly to a refutation of Riolanus,
whose scholar he had been, and at the same time shows himself so
thoroughly at home in the general question, that he is able to throw
additional light on it by new and ingenious considerations and
experiments.
Harvey appears to have been pleased with Slegel’s production; for by and
by he sends the Hamburger his new work on Generation, accompanied by an
admirable letter, which has happily been preserved.[44] No one in
reading that remarkable epistle could suppose that the pen which set it
down was in the hand of a man in the 75th year of his age.
The young men of 1628 and 1630, who had been educated in unbelief of the
circulation, were now coming into possession of professorial chairs and
places of distinction; and having long escaped from leading-strings and
made inquiry for themselves, were beginning in many of the European
universities to proclaim the better faith through further knowledge that
had sprung up within them. Harvey had himself received the seeds of his
discovery in Italy; but the fructifying mother was slow to recognize him
whom she had so powerfully concurred to form. It was not till 1651 that
Harvey’s views were in any way admitted beyond the Alps, when Trullius,
a Roman professor, expounded and taught them. About the same time, John
Pecquet,[45] of Dieppe, and Thomas Bartholin, the Dane,[46] men of
original mind in the one case, of extensive learning and great research
in the other, gave in their adhesion to the new doctrine, and spread it
far and near by their writings. The victory for the circulation may
finally be said to have been won, when Plempius, of Louvain, the old
antagonist of Descartes on the subject, retracted all he had formerly
written against it, convinced of its truth, as he so candidly informs
us, by the very pains, he took to satisfy himself of its erroneousness,
and publicly proclaimed his conversion: “Primum mihi hoc inventum non
placuit,” says the worthy Plempius--“This discovery did not please me at
all at first, as I publicly testified both by word of mouth and in my
writings; but by and by, when I gave myself up with firmer purpose to
refute and expose it, lo! I refute and expose myself, so convincing, not
to say merely persuasive, are the arguments of the author: I examine the
whole thing anew and with greater care, and having at length made the
dissection of a few live dogs, I find that all his statements are most
true.”[47]
From the first promulgation of the doctrine of the circulation, its
progress towards ultimate general acknowledgment can scarcely be said
for a moment to have been interrupted. The hostility of the Primeroses
and Parisanuses and Riolans never interfered with it in fact; the more
candid spirits were rather led to inquire, by the virulence of these
weak and inconsistent opponents, who thus hastened the catastrophe of
their own discomfiture, and the triumph of the truth. If men’s minds
were once in danger of being led astray, it was only for an instant, and
not so much through the opposition of enemies, as by an erroneous
generalization, which a short interval of time sufficed to correct.
Cæcilius Folius, a Venetian physician, having met with one of those
anomalous instances of pervious foramen ovale in an adult, immediately
and without looking farther, jumped to the conclusion that this
structure or arrangement was normal, and that the blood passed in all
cases by the route he had discovered, from the right to the left side of
the heart. Many Italians received with favour the account which Folius
immediately published of his discovery;[48] and the natural philosopher,
Gassendi, having about the same period had another instance of the kind
which Folius encountered, shown to him, concurred with this writer in
his views, and by a variety of arguments and objections, strove to
damage, and did temporarily damage, the Harveian doctrine.[49] But this
was only for a brief season; for Domenic de Marchettis[50] soon after
showed that Folius had mistaken an extremely rare occurrence for a
general fact, and that if the open foramen ovale might afford a passage
from the right to the left side of the heart in one case, closed it
would suffer no such transit in hundreds of other instances. Gassendi,
moreover, by getting still more out of his depth, soon afterwards showed
that familiarity with general physics did not imply a particular
knowledge of anatomy, nor give the power of reasoning sagely on subjects
of special physiology; so that in his eagerness to assail Harvey he did
injury in the end only to his own reputation. In short, Harvey in his
lifetime had the high satisfaction of witnessing his discovery generally
received, and inculcated as a canon in most of the medical schools of
Europe; he is, therefore, one of the few--his friend Thomas Hobbes says,
he was the only one within his knowledge--“Solus quod sciam,”[51] who
lived to see the new doctrine which he had promulgated victorious over
opposition, and established in public opinion. Harvey’s views, then,
were admitted; the circulation of the blood, through the action of the
heart, was received as an established fact; but envy and detraction now
began their miserable work. The fact was so; but it was none of Harvey’s
discovering; the fact was so, but it was of no great moment in itself,
and the merit of arriving at it was small; the way had been amply
prepared for such a conclusion.
Let us look as impartially as we may at each of these statements.
They who deny the originality of Harvey’s induction, very commonly
confound the idea of a Motion of the blood, with the idea of a
Continuous Motion in a Circle. It would seem that even from remote
antiquity, and by common consent, mankind had recognized the blood to be
in motion. We have this fact declared to us by all antiquity, and it is
even particularly referred to in various passages of the grand observer
of his age, the depositary of the popular science of all preceding
ages--Shakespeare. Brutus speaks thus to Portia:
“You are my true and honourable wife;
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart;”
language not more touching and beautiful than physiologically correct.
And again, with more of involution and ellipsis, yet with a meaning that
is unmistakable, Warwick, by the bedside of the murdered Gloster,
proceeds,--
“See how the blood is settled in his face!
--Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,
Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless,
--Being all descended to the labouring heart,
Who in the conflict that he holds with death,
Attracts the same for aidance gainst the enemy;
Which with the heart there cools, and ne’er returneth
To blush and beautify the cheek again--
--But see, his face is black and full of blood,” &c.
These passages have actually been cited, to prove that Shakespeare was
not unacquainted with the circulation; and there have not been wanting
some[52] who have even argued that Shakespeare had his knowledge direct
from the fountain-head--from Harvey himself, with whom, for several
years at least, he was contemporaneous.[53]
The passages quoted above are referred to all the more willingly, from
their having preceded the teaching of Harvey by a few years only; but
Shakespeare probably referred to nothing more than the accredited
opinion that the blood was in motion within the vessels, particularly
the veins of the body. In ancient times, indeed, the veins were
regarded, as they are esteemed by the vulgar at the present hour, as the
principal vessels of the body; they only were once believed to contain
true blood; the arteries were held to contain at best but a little
blood, different from that of the veins, and mixed accidentally in some
sort with the vital spirits, of which they were the proper conduits.
In former times, farther,--times anterior to Harvey whether more
remotely or more nearly,--the liver, as the organ of the hæmapoësis, was
regarded as the source of all the veins, i. e. of all the proper
blood-vessels; the heart, as the generator of heat and the vital
spirits, was viewed as the mere cistern of the blood, whence it was
propelled by the act of inspiration, and whither it reverted during the
act of expiration, its flow to this part of the body or to that, being
mainly determined by certain excitations there inherent or specially set
up. By and by, however, the liver was given up as the origin of the
venous system generally; but such anatomists as Jacobus Sylvius, Realdus
Columbus, Bartholomæus Eustachius, and Gabriel Fallopius, may be found
opposing Vesalius in regard to the origin of the vena cava, and
asserting that it takes its rise from the liver, not from the heart, as
the great reformer in modern anatomy had maintained.
In the progress of anatomical investigation, the valves in the interior
of the heart, at the roots of the two great cardiac arterial trunks, and
in the course of the veins at large, were perceived and their probable
uses and actions canvassed. The general and prevalent notion was that
they served to break or moderate the force of the current in the
interior of the vessels or parts where they were encountered; though
Berengarius of Carpi,[54] in describing the cardiac valves, had already
said that the effect of the tricuspid valves, between the right auricle
and ventricle, must be to prevent the blood in the former cavity from
escaping into the latter; whilst the office of the semilunar valves, at
the origins of the pulmonic artery and aorta, he declared, from their
position, must be to prevent the entrance of the blood of the great
arterial trunks into the heart. Fabricius, the master of Harvey, may be
said to have perfected anatomical knowledge in regard to the valves of
the veins--for he by no means first directed attention to their
existence, or discovered them, as is generally asserted. Fabricius
believed that their function was to act as obstacles to congestions of
blood, as strengtheners of the veins and preventives to their becoming
over-distended.
Another long and much agitated point in the anatomy of the sanguiferous
system, was the state of the septum ventriculorum of the heart, in
respect of permeability or impermeability. The reason of the vast
importance attached to this point was connected with the ancient, and,
in Harvey’s time, generally accredited hypothesis of the Three
Spirits--the natural, the vital, and the animal. The hypothesis to be
brought into play, was presumed to require the intermixture in the heart
of the two kinds of blood that were held appropriate to the two
ventricles and to the arteries and veins respectively, and that were
farther believed to meet in the cavities of the cranium, thorax, and
abdomen, from which they returned to the heart by the way they came, for
a fresh supply of the spirits (now exhausted or enfeebled), under the
agency of which all the important operations of the body were believed
to be accomplished.
Now, Galen, the author of this hypothesis, in order to obtain an
admixture of the two kinds of blood, feigned and described the partition
between the two ventricles, either as perforated like a sieve, or as
filled with depressions of depth sufficient to entitle them to be viewed
as constituting a kind of third ventricle--the last assumption doubtless
to accommodate each order of spirits with its own particular officine or
workshop. With the revival of anatomical knowledge in modern Europe,
however, the partition of the ventricles was soon perceived not to be
porous or cribriform, but, as was first said, to be so nearly solid that
any filtration of blood through it was well nigh impossible
(Berengarius, 1521), and next, to be so completely solid that all
permeation of blood was impossible (Vesalius, 1555), and another means
must therefore be found for securing the necessary admixture of the two
kinds of blood in order to effect the engenderment of the natural,
animal, and vital spirits.
Such was the state of anatomical science and physiological belief on
this particular point when Michael Servetus came upon the stage, and
suggested the transit of the blood through the lungs from the right side
of the heart to the left, with a view of meeting the difficulty which
the undeniable solidity of the septum ventriculorum opposed to the
presumed necessary admixture of the two kinds of blood. Servetus’s idea,
consequently--if at the distance of three hundred years we may presume
to follow the mental process that led to the penning of the remarkable
and often-quoted passage which occurs in his works--appears to be
nothing more than a suggestion or proposition as a means of meeting a
difficulty; it is very much as though he had said: If you cannot go
straight through, you must even go round about. To so much and to no
more, do Servetus’s claims to be considered a discoverer, in the sense
we would attach to that word, amount. The passage from the ‘Restitutio
Christianismi’ of Servetus, 1553, if viewed from the point proposed,
will not fail to set his title to be regarded as the discoverer of the
lesser circulation in its true light--in a light under which it has not
yet been seen. We translate so much of the passage as bears on the
question under review. “The vital spirit has its origin in the left
ventricle, the lungs assisting especially in its generation. It is a
subtile spirit * * * It is engendered from the mixture that takes place
in the lungs of the inspired air with the elaborated subtile blood
which the right ventricle of the heart communicates to the left. But
this communication takes place, not by the middle septum of the heart,
as is commonly believed, but by a remarkable artifice; the subtile blood
of the right side of the heart is agitated in a lengthened course
through the lungs, whereby it is elaborated, from which it is thrown of
a crimson colour, and from the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery) is
transfused into the arteria venosa (pulmonary veins); it is then mixed
in the arteria venosa itself with the inspired air, and by the act of
expiration is purified from fuliginous vapours, when, having become the
fit recipient of the vital spirit, it is at length attracted by the
diastole. Now, that the communication and preparation take place as
stated through the lungs, is proclaimed by the various conjunctions and
communications of the arterial vein with the venous artery. The
remarkable size of the arterial vein (pulmonary artery) confirms this, a
vessel which could neither have its actual constitution nor dimensions,
nor transmit such a quantity of the purest blood direct from the heart
itself, for the mere nourishment of the lungs. Neither would the heart
supply the lungs in such proportion, (especially when we see the lungs
in the embryo nourished from another source) by reason of those
membranes or valves which remain unopened until the hour of birth, as
Galen teaches. The blood, consequently, from the moment of birth, is
sent, and in such quantity is sent, for another purpose from the heart
into the lungs; from the lungs also it is not simple air that is sent to
the heart, but air mixed with blood is transmitted through the arteria
venosa (pulmonary vein). In the lungs consequently does the mixture take
place. The crimson colour is imparted to the spirituous blood by the
lungs, not by the heart. There is not room enough in the left ventricle
of the heart for so important and so great an admixture; neither is
there space there for the elaboration into the crimson colour. Finally,
the septum medium, seeing that it is without vessels and properties, is
not adapted to accomplish that communication and elaboration, although
something may transude through it.”
The discussion in this passage from Servetus obviously concerns the
generation of the vital spirit, not the pulmonic circulation properly so
called--that is altogether secondary and subordinate. His mention of
“numerous communications between the vena arteriosa and the arteria
venosa,” is plainly conjectural; neither he, nor any one else for a
century after him, saw such communications. The course through the
lungs, then, as suggested by Servetus, was a mere hypothetical proposal
for getting over the difficulty of the solid, or nearly solid, septum
ventriculorum. As to the means by which such a transfusion as he
suggests, is effected, Servetus, as he was profoundly ignorant himself,
so does he leave his readers entirely in the dark. The transmission of
the blood from the right to the left side of the heart, which Servetus
proposed, is in fact, no great improvement on the old efflux and reflux,
like the tides of Euripus, betwixt Attica and Eubœa. He had no
conception of a circle of the blood beginning and ending in the heart.
On the contrary, he regarded the liver as the fountain-head of the
blood; and if he has any reference to a moving power in connexion with
the heart, it is nothing more than the diastole or dilatation of the
organ that is named--a passive state therefore considered as an active
and efficient cause, which is absurd.
The first modern anatomist of high repute, who treats particularly of
the motion of the blood, may be said to be Realdus Columbus;[55] for
Servetus, though educated to the medical profession, had long forsaken
it for divinity, and only uses his old anatomical knowledge as a means
of illustrating a theological dogma. Columbus, in treating of the heart
and lungs, has certainly much that is remarkable, and much that is
true; and had he said nothing more than we find in single detached
sentences or paragraphs of his book, he must have been regarded as
having gone a great length in the right direction. The blood, he says,
once it has entered the right ventricle from the vena cava, can in no
way again get back; for the tricuspid valves are so placed that whilst
they give a ready passage to the stream inwards, they effectually oppose
its return. The blood continuing to advance from the right ventricle
into the vena arteriosa or pulmonary artery, once there cannot flow back
upon the ventricle, for it is opposed by the sigmoid valves situate at
the root of the vessel. The blood, therefore, agitated and mixed with
the air in the lungs, and having thus in some sort acquired the nature
of spirit, is carried by the arteria venosa or pulmonary vein into the
left ventricle, from whence, being received into the aorta, it is, by
the ramifications of this vessel, transmitted to all parts of the body.
This much taken by itself looks very like an exposition of the
circulation of the blood as understood at the present time, though we
still see that the blood must be made to participate in the nature of
spirit before it enters the arteries, and is not the blood which is
contained in the veins, and which nourishes the body; but when we go
farther and turn to other parts of his writings, we see that Columbus
could never have conceived any proper idea of the circulation. For
example, he continues, with Galen, to regard the liver as the origin of
all the veins. The vena portæ, he says, arising by innumerable roots
from the concavity of the liver, proceeds to carry blood from this organ
by different branches to the stomach, spleen, and intestines, to the end
that it may convey nourishment in the first case, black bile in the
second, and in the third serve a double function--viz. supply
nourishment to the intestines at once, and by a kind of imbibition,
obtain nutritive matter, which is forthwith sent back to the liver for
elaboration into blood. The vena cava again, he describes as arising
from the convex aspect of the liver, whence, by its ramifications, it
carries the blood that is requisite to nourish and maintain every part
of the body.
This of itself is enough. But when, in addition, we find that Columbus
denies the muscular nature of the heart, we are fully qualified to form
a true estimate of the conception which he could have had of the motion
of the blood, and of his right to be regarded as the discoverer of its
ceaseless circular movement.
The next who is brought upon the scene with the imputed honour of having
had a knowledge, not only of the lesser, but of the greater or systemic
circulation also, is Andreas Cæsalpinus,[56] of Arezzo. The account
which this celebrated peripatetic philosopher gives of the passage of
the blood from the right to the left side of the heart is essentially
the same as that given by Columbus. From the right ventricle the blood
passes into the pulmonic artery, and from this, by numerous anastomoses,
into the pulmonic veins, which transmit it to the left ventricle.
Cæsalpinus says well that it is absurd to call the pulmonary artery by
the name of vena arteriosa, on the mere ground of its taking its
departure, like the vena cava, from the right ventricle; it is a true
artery, and is, in all respects, analogous to the aorta. The title of
arteria venosa, again, given to the pulmonic vein is not less
ridiculous; inasmuch as this vessel, though it end in the left
ventricle, has all the properties of the veins at large.
So far it looks as if Cæsalpinus had an exact idea of the pulmonary
circulation; indeed, he uses the word Circulation in reference to the
transit of the blood through the lungs; but when we discover him still
speaking of the permeation of the septum ventriculorum by the blood, our
faith in the extent and accuracy of his knowledge begins to waver.
With reference to the greater or systemic circulation, again,
Cæsalpinus speaks of the swelling of the veins between the circle of
pressure and the extremities of the vessels, when a ligature is thrown
round a limb; and he even goes so far as to state that the common
opinion which admitted a progressive motion--i. e. a motion from trunks
to branches--of the blood in the veins was erroneous. Did we go no
farther we should be led to conclude, as in Columbus’s case, that
Cæsalpinus believed in the continuous movement of the blood in the veins
in one direction only; and, as he has already spoken of the exit of the
blood from the left ventricle, and of its reception by the aorta for
general distribution, it might forthwith be inferred that, possessed of
the essential elements of the greater circulation, he must, as matter of
course, have been familiar with this as an ultimate result. And such an
inference has indeed been drawn for him by high authority; but
Cæsalpinus came not himself to any such conclusion; it was arrived at by
others in his behalf, and after the lapse of almost a century from the
date of his first publication. When we find Cæsalpinus, in other and
closely connected passages of his writings, singing the old cuckoo note
about a flux and reflux of the blood in the veins, and even using the
accredited word--Euripus--to express his idea of its tide-like nature;
when we further perceive that he was ignorant of the existence of the
valves of the veins, and finally arrive at his explanation of the cause
of the swelling which takes place in the veins of an extremity beyond a
ligature,--the cause with him consisting in an effort of the blood to
get back to the focus or centre, lest, through the compression of the
veins, it should be cut off and suffocated,--we not only feel that we
were warranted in entertaining a wholesome scepticism of the conclusion
come to by the admirers of Cæsalpinus in regard to his knowledge of a
circulation of the blood; but waxing in our infidelity as we become
farther acquainted with his thoughts on the constitution of the blood,
we find everything opposed to the likelihood of his having arrived at
the same result as Harvey; and, at length, we discover that he neither
had nor could have had any true knowledge of the circulation. Starting
from the Aristotelian doctrines of growth and nutrition (of which so
much will be found in Harvey’s work on Generation), Cæsalpinus held that
there were two kinds of blood, one for the growth, another for the
nourishment of the body. The blood which went to augment the body, and
which he designated alimentum auctivum, or aliment of increase, flowed
from the liver into the vena cava, which he seems to have thought was
connected with the heart only, ut inde virtus omnis a corde
descendat--that a sufficiency of virtue might be thereby communicated to
it. The auctive blood, he farther thought, was attracted into the
ventricles of the heart by the inherent heat of the organ. The
dilatation of the heart and arteries he imagined to be due to “an
effervescence of the spirit;” and the cause of their “collapse”--not
systole, be it observed, in the active sense--was the appropriation by
the parts of the body of the nutritive and augmentative matter. Again,
though Cæsalpinus speaks of the intercommunication of the minute
arteries and veins, he still thought that it was only during sleep that
the blood mixed with the spirits passed from the former into the latter
class of vessels; for it is during sleep, he says, that the veins become
distended, whilst the pulsations of the arteries are then moderated. He
plainly sees no connexion between a delivery by the artery and a filling
by the vein. It is along with all this, and as if to settle the question
of the kind of knowledge Cæsalpinus had of the movement of the blood,
that he uses the old word Euripus, to express his idea of its
alternating or tide-like motion.
Cæsalpinus, let us add, had no conception of the heart as the efficient
cause of any motion which the blood might have. In the often-quoted
passage from the work ‘De Plantis,’[57] it is still the spirit inherent
in, or associated with, the blood, that is the cause of its motion.
Cæsalpinus, consequently, tried by a very moderately searching
criticism, presents himself to us as but very little farther advanced
than the ancients in his ideas on the motion of the blood.--The
interpretation which successive generations of men give to a passage in
a writer, some century or two old, is very apt to be in consonance with
the state of knowledge at the time, in harmony with the prevailing ideas
of the day, and, doubtless, often differs signally from the meaning that
was in the mind of the man who composed it. The world saw nothing of the
circulation of the blood in Servetus, Columbus, Cæsalpinus,
or--Shakespeare, until after William Harvey had taught and written.
The truth is, that some of the foremost grounds of Harvey’s claims to
rank as a discoverer are very commonly overlooked. We always associate
his name and fame with the development of the ultimate fact of the
circulation of the blood. But Harvey, as a step to this conclusion,
first demonstrated the heart as the means by which the circulation was
effected; and he farther showed that there was but _one_ kind of blood,
common to both the arteries and the veins. Up to his time the heart was
regarded as the passive cistern of the blood, and the elaboratory of the
vital spirits; it was not known as the moving instrument in any efflux
or reflux of the blood, or even of any lesser circulation that had been
previously asserted or conjectured. The moving power was still the
respiratory act. Harvey may be said to have first broached, as he also
essentially completed the physiology of the heart’s actions. The
circular motion of the blood followed as a necessary corollary from
these. The “motion of the heart” has even precedence in the title of his
immortal work; the chapter in which he first enters properly on his
subject (Chap. 2), is devoted to its consideration. And then, no
physiologist up to Harvey’s time had questioned the existence of two
kinds of blood, one appropriate to each order of vessels, and answering
different ends in the economy.
The only name still wanting in this historical sketch, till we come to
Harvey, is that of Fabricius of Aquapendente, his teacher in anatomy.
Fabricius had given particular attention, among other subjects, to the
anatomy of the valves of the veins, which he entitled ostila venarum.
Fabricius, indeed, possessed so thorough a knowledge of the valvular
elements of the vascular system, that it is really astonishing, as an
able writer[58] has remarked, that he should not have had clearer ideas
on the functions, among other things, of the pulmonary veins, and should
have continued a rigid adherent to the prejudices which prevailed before
his time. Fabricius could observe, and he could describe; but he wanted
the combining intellect that infers, the imagination that leads to new
ideas--to discovery. Though he did little himself, however, to advance
the sum of human knowledge, he proved a tooth in the wheel that has
since put in motion the whole machinery of modern medical science. He it
was who sowed the seed, little dreaming of its kind, which, finding one
spot of congenial soil, sprung up a harvest that has continued to
nurture the world of physiological science to the present hour.[59]
Having now disposed of the claims that have been set up in behalf of one
or another as the discoverer of the circulation, and shown, we trust
satisfactorily, that these are all alike untenable, we should now
proceed to discuss the question of the cui bono?--but this meets us in
so forbidding an aspect, brimful as is our mind with a sense of the
all-importance of the knowledge we had from Harvey, and seems so little
to belong to our subject, that we gladly pass it by unnoticed; though it
be only to find ourselves encountered by that other topic, but little
more congenial to our mood of mind and intimate persuasion: The merit of
Harvey as a discoverer. Few, very few have been found to question this;
but as one man of undeniable learning and eminence in his
profession,[60] has very strangely, as it seems to us, been led to do
so, it will not be impertinent if we cast away a few words on this
matter.
Discovery is of several, particularly of two kinds: one sensible or
perceptive; another rational or inductive; the former an act of simple
consciousness through an impression made on one or more of the senses;
the latter a conclusion come to by the higher powers of the
understanding dealing with data previously acquired by the senses and
perceptive faculties.--We look through a telescope, for example, and we
perceive a star which no one else had seen before; we note the fact, and
so become discoverers of a new star. The merit here is not, surely, very
great, though the added fact may be highly important. Again, one of the
planets is subject to such perturbations in its course that to compose
exact tables of its orbit is held impossible. These perturbations are
referable to none of the known perturbing causes. A great astronomer
suggests the influence of an exterior and unknown planet as their cause.
A consummate mathematician and physical astronomer makes trial of this
suggestion: he assumes the ascertained perturbations as elements, he
combines these under the guidance of knowledge and reason, and at length
he says, if the cause suggested be well founded, there or thereabouts
must it exist; and lo! on turning the far-seeing tube to the point in
space which he had indicated, there in verity gleams a new world, then
first seen, though launched by God from Eternity to circle on the verge
of our creation; and he who bade us look becomes the discoverer of a new
planet. Who will dispute the merit here? Truly, man does show the God
within him when he uses his faculties--God-like in themselves--in such
God-like fashion. But Harvey’s merit, according to our idea, was of the
selfsame description in another sphere. The facts he used were
familiarly known, most of them to his predecessors for nearly a century,
all of them to his teachers and immediate contemporaries; yet did no
one, mastering these facts in their connexion and sequence, rising
superior to prejudice, groundless hypothesis, and erroneous reasoning,
draw the inference that now meets the world as irresistible, until the
combining mind of Harvey gave it shape and utterance. To our
apprehension Harvey was as far above his fellows as the eye of poetic
intelligence, that exultingly absorbs the beauties of the starry sky and
the green earth, is above the mere physical sense that distinguishes
light from dark. The late Dr. Barclay, a fervent admirer of Harvey,
whose name he never uttered without the epithet immortal, has put the
question of Harvey’s merit both happily and eloquently, and it affords
us pleasure to quote the passage from the writings of our old and
honoured teacher in anatomy. “The late Dr. Hunter,” says Dr.
Barclay,[61] “has rather invidiously introduced Harvey along with
Copernicus and Columbus, to show that his merit as a discoverer was
comparatively low. But what did Copernicus, and what did Columbus? Not
in possession of more numerous facts than their contemporaries, but
endowed with nobler and more vigorous intellects, the one developed the
intricate system of the heavenly bodies and the other discovered an
unheard-of continent. Was it not in the same way, by the exertion of
superior intellect, that Harvey made his immortal discovery? I know not
what has happened in the world unseen; but if I may judge from the
records of history and the annals of fame, the spirit of Bacon, the
spirits of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton have not been ashamed to
welcome and associate with the congenial spirit of Harvey.” To this fine
passage there is little to be added: Harvey’s discovery was of the
rational and inductive and therefore higher class, according to our
estimate; it was made in virtue of the intellectual powers which
peculiarly distinguish man, possessed in a state of the highest
perfection.
THE WORK ON GENERATION.
In our account of Harvey’s public career we found him busy with the
subject of Generation at Oxford in 1642; but he had certainly turned his
attention that way at a much earlier period, for one of the chief causes
of his regret, as expressed to Dr. Ent, for the destruction of his
papers during the civil war, is the loss of his Observations on the
Generation of Insects, which could only have been made and reduced to
form many years previously, probably before his engagement to accompany
the Duke of Lennox on his travels. And then we see that all his notes on
the gestation of the hind or doe were made in the palmy days of the
first Charles, before the differences between him and the people of
these countries had come to the arbitrement of arms. Harvey probably
occupied a good deal of his leisure in arranging and writing the work on
Generation, after quitting the service of Charles in 1646; his practice
at this period was not extensive, and he seems to have passed much of
his time in the country. Harvey appears to have been little inclined to
the publication of this work, and only to have ventured it out of his
hands with reluctance. Without the solicitations of Ent, indeed, it
would certainly have been left unpublished during his lifetime. Ent,
however, succeeded in carrying off the prize which his illustrious
friend had showed him, and lost no time in getting it into types, taking
on himself the task of correcting the press, and sending it forth
according to his own ideas in fitting form, with a frontispiece, and a
highflown dedication to the President and Fellows of the College of
Physicians. Ent’s account of his interview with Harvey on the occasion
of obtaining his consent to the publication, though highly theatrical,
is still extremely interesting. Saluting the great anatomist, and asking
if all were well with him, Harvey answers, somewhat impatiently as it
seems: “How can it, whilst the Commonwealth is full of distractions, and
I myself am still in the open sea? And truly,” he continues, “did I not
find solace in my studies, and a balm for my spirit in the memory of my
observations of former years, I should feel little desire for longer
life.” (p. 145.) Let the reader turn to the page from which the above
quotation is taken, and to the one which follows it, for thoughts and
views that clearly bespeak the greatness of intellect, the nobleness of
sentiment that distinguished William Harvey. When Ent proceeds to say
that the learned world, aware of his indefatigable industry, were
eagerly looking for other works at his hands, the fervid genius of the
poet or discoverer still appears in his reply: “And would you be the
man,” said Harvey, smiling, “who should recommend me to quit the
peaceful haven, where I now pass my life, and launch again upon the
faithless sea? You know full well what a storm my former lucubrations
raised. Much better is it oftentimes to grow wise at home and in
private, than by publishing what you have amassed with infinite labour,
to stir up tempests that may rob you of peace and quiet for the rest of
your days.” (p. 147.) By and by, however, he produces his Exercises on
the Generation of Animals, and though he makes many difficulties at
first, urging, among other things, that the work must be held
incomplete, as containing nothing on the generation of insects, Ent,
nevertheless, prevails in the end, and receives the papers with full
authority, either speedily to commit them to the press, or to delay
their publication to a future time. Ent set about his office of midwife,
as he has it, forthwith, and the following year (1651) saw the birth of
the work on Generation.
Physiological science generally was not sufficiently advanced in
Harvey’s time to admit of a truly great and enduring work being produced
on a subject so abstruse, and involving so many particulars as that of
Generation. On the doctrine of the circulation the dawn had long been
visible; Harvey came and the sun arose. On the subject of animal
reproduction, all was night and darkness two centuries ago; and though
the light has still been waxing in strength since Harvey wrote, it is
only in these times that we have seen it brightening into something like
the day. In Harvey’s time the very means and instruments that were
indispensable to the investigation were not yet known, or were used of
powers inadequate to bring the prime facts within the cognizance of the
senses. Harvey doubtless did as much as any man living could have
accomplished when he wrote. He announced the general truth: Omne animal
ex ovo; he showed the cicatricula of the egg as the point where the
reproductive process begins; he corrected numerous errors into which his
master Fabricius had fallen; he further pointed out the path of
observation and experiment as the only one that could lead to
satisfactory results in the investigation of a subject which gradually
displayed itself as one of natural history; and, it may be added, by his
wanderings in the labyrinth of the metaphysics of physiological
science, he did enough to deter any one from attempting to tread such
barren ground again. In his work on the Heart and Blood, Harvey had all
the essential facts of the subject clearly before him, and he used them
at once in such masterly-wise, that he left little or nothing for
addition either by himself or others. Secure of his footing here, he
could well dispense with “vital spirits,” “innate heat,” and other
inscrutable agencies, he could leave “adequate and efficient causes,”
and other metaphysical phantoms on one side--it was physics that he was
dealing with, and the physician was at home. With the information we now
possess, we see clearly how indifferently weaponed was the physiologist
of the year 1647 for encountering such a subject as Animal Generation; a
Leeuwenhoek and a De Graaf, a Spallanzani and a Haighton, a Wolff, a
Purkinje, a Von Baer, a Valentin, a Rudolph Wagner, a Bischoff, and many
more, had successively to appear, before the facts of the subject could
be ascertained, and a Schleiden and a Schwann were further necessary as
ultimate interpreters of the things observed before they could be either
rightly or wholly understood. No wonder then that The Physiologist of
the 17th century, meets us in the guise of one rather puzzled with the
burthen he has made up his mind to bear, and, contrary to his former
wont, eking out the lack of positive knowledge by reiterated
disquisitions on topics where certainty is unattainable.
It is rather curious, moreover, to find Harvey, in his work on
Generation, not entirely escaping the pitfall of which he was so well
aware, and which he shunned so successfully in his earlier production.
In the work on the Heart, he sets out with the certainty that the whole
of the notions of the ancients on the heart and blood are untenable; and
then, taking Nature for his guide, his fine intellect never once suffers
him to stray from the right path. In the book on Generation, on the
other hand, he begins by putting himself in some sort into the harness
of Aristotle, and taking the bit of Fabricius between his teeth; and
then, either assuming the ideas of the former as premises, or those of
the latter as topics of discussion or dissent, he labours on
endeavouring to find Nature in harmony with the Stagyrite, or at
variance with the professor of Padua--for, in spite of many expressions
of respect and deference for his old master, Harvey evidently delights
to find Fabricius in the wrong. Finally, so possessed is he by
scholastic ideas, that he winds up some of his opinions upon animal
reproduction by presenting them in the shape of logical syllogisms.
The age of Harvey, then, was not competent to produce a work on
generation,--it was still an impossible undertaking. Yet has Harvey
written a remarkable book; one that teems with interesting observation,
and that presents the author to us in the character of the elegant
writer, the scholar, and the poet as well as the discoverer--if, indeed,
poet and discoverer, though variously applied, be not identical terms.
Besides the points already referred to, as immediately connected with
his subject, we here find Harvey anticipating modern surgery, by
applying a ligature to the main artery of a tumour which he wished to
extirpate, and so making its subsequent removal much more easy. Here,
too, we find him, a century and a half before his contemporaries, in the
most rapidly progressive period in the history of human knowledge,
throwing out the first hint of the true use of the lungs. Hitherto the
lungs had been regarded as surrounding the heart for the purpose of
ventilating the blood and tempering or moderating its heat, the heart
being viewed as the focus or hearth of the innate heat; and Harvey
himself generally uses language in harmony with these ideas; but in one
instance, the lightning of genius giving him a glimpse of the truth, he
says, “Air is given neither for the cooling nor the nutrition of animals
* * * it is as if heat were rather enkindled within the fœtus [at
birth] than repressed by the influence of the air.”[62]
Had William Harvey possessed this idea in his earlier years, and pursued
it as he did that of the blood never moving in the veins but in one
recurrent course, he would at least have prepared the way for another
grand discovery in physiology: demonstrating the erroneousness of the
current physiological notions on the use of the lungs, he would have led
the van in the investigation of their proper office; and, had everything
else permitted, he might even have anticipated Joseph Black in
explaining the source of animal heat. But this was an impossibility at
the time: chemistry, in Harvey’s day, mostly in the hands of adepts and
charlatans, transmuters of the base metals, and searchers after the
philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life, could have no attractions
for the clear intellect of the demonstrator of the circulation of the
blood. No wonder, therefore, that Harvey “did not care for chymistrey,”
or that “he was wont to speak against the chymists” (Aubrey, l. c. p.
385); this anecdote is but another proof of Harvey’s sagacity. Harvey
then could only show himself in advance of his age by questioning its
opinions on the office of the lungs as he does; the state of chemical
science in the middle of the 17th century did not admit of his doing
more. Harvey, however, well knew the vivifying force of heat: he saw it
the immediate indispensable agent in the reproduction of a living
sentient being, as it is probably employed by the Creator as mainspring
in the elaborate mechanism of the automatic animal body.
* * * * *
The short piece on the ANATOMY of THOMAS PARR, is interesting in itself;
and in giving us a glimpse of Harvey’s style of pathological reasoning,
confirms us in our faith in the great physiologist as a practitioner of
medicine. If knowledge will not help, how should the want of it avail?
* * * * *
The LETTERS of Great men generally serve to make us more intimately
acquainted with them than without such aid we could have become. This is
more especially the case as respects the letters that are written in the
ease and confidence of private friendship. It is greatly to be regretted
that so few of the letters of this description that flowed from the pen
of Harvey should have come down to us. Those addressed to Giovanni
Nardi, however, show us what an affectionate and elegant mind our Harvey
possessed; how mindful he always appears of former kindnesses to himself
and to those that were near to him; how anxious that he should be
cherished in the memory of his friends, even as he cherishes them in his
own!
The other letters we possess are mostly upon professional--physiological
topics; though the one addressed from Nuremberg to Caspar Hofmann may,
perhaps, be held an exception; for in this letter the manly and candid
character of Harvey displays itself conspicuously. In his own city he
challenges the Nuremberg professor to the proof. “If you would see with
your own eyes the things I assert of the circulation, I promise to show
them to you with the opportunity afforded me.” We have seen that Harvey
accompanied the Earl of Arundel in his extraordinary embassy to the
Emperor, in 1636, and may probably have been one of the party of which
three members were barbarously murdered on their way, from Nuremberg to
Ratisbon, as Crowne[63] informs us. Hence the solicitude which Hollar,
the artist, who also accompanied the ambassador, informed Aubrey the
Earl of Arundel expressed for his physician’s safety: “For he would
still be making of excursions into the woods, making observations of
strange trees, plants, earths, &c., and sometimes like to be lost; so
that my lord ambassador would be really angry with him, for there was
not only danger of wild beasts but of thieves.”[64]
The burthen of the long and able letter to Siegel, of Hamburg, is still
the Circulation. The one addressed to Morison, and the two to Horst,
treat of the discovery of the receptaculum chyli and thoracic duct by
Pecquet. Harvey has been held wanting to his greatness in having refused
his assent to the facts of the distinct existence and special office of
the lymphatic system. But, non omnia possumus omnes; Harvey had his own
work laid out for him, and the lymphatic system was not a part of it.
Aselli’s book on the ‘Lacteal Viens,’[65] was even published before
Harvey’s own Exercises on the Heart and Blood had appeared, and must
have been familiar to our physiologist; but that he failed to perceive
the import of that discovery, and never inquired particularly into it,
cannot surely be rightly laid to him as a charge; and then, when the
newly-discovered system of vessels acquired extension from the
researches of Pecquet, Rudbeck, and Bartholin, Harvey felt that he was
both too old and too infirm to enter on the examination of so extensive
and delicate an anatomical question. In entire consistency with his
noble nature, however, and in striking contrast with his own opponents,
he nowhere formally denies the existence of the new lymphatic vessels;
nor does he once oppose the authority of his name to the investigation
of the truth. On the contrary, he states his objections, “not as being
obstinately wedded to his own opinion, but that he may show what can
readily be urged in opposition to the advocates of the new ideas. Nor do
I doubt,” he proceeds, “but that many things now hidden in the well of
Democritus, will by and by be drawn up into day by the ceaseless
industry of a coming age.”[66]
The letter to Vlackveld was written the very year, within a few weeks
indeed, of his death. It is even touching--it is in vain, he says, to
his correspondent, that he would apply the spur; he has already felt his
right to demand his release from duty; yet would he still be honorably
considered by his contemporaries, and he begs his friend Vlackveld to
love him to the last.
* * * * *
We have taken occasion from time to time in the course of our narrative,
to glance at the mental and moral constitution, and also at the personal
character, of Harvey, principally by way of inference from his conduct
on particular occasions, and from what appears in his writings. Happily
we have in addition a few particulars from the pen of a contemporary,
John Aubrey,[67] which, though perchance they do not harmonize in every
respect with the facts in his public life and the portrait he gives us
of himself in his works, are nevertheless extremely interesting, and
cannot be left unnoticed in a Life of Harvey.
“In person,” Aubrey informs us, “Harvey was not tall, but of the lowest
stature; round faced; olivaster (like wainscot) complexion; little eye,
round, very black, full of spirit; his hair black as a raven, but quite
white 20 years before he died.” The portrait we have of Harvey by
Cornelius Jansen, in the library of the Royal College of Physicians, as
well as of one, we presume by Bemmel, now in the possession of Dr.
Richard Bright, corresponds with this account: the temperament is
nervous-bilious; the forehead is compact and square, and of greater
width than usual between the temples; the expression is highly
intellectual, contemplative, and manly.
“In temper,” Aubrey says, “he was like the rest of his brothers, very
choleric, and, in his younger days, he wore a dagger, as the fashion
then was, which he would be apt to draw out upon every occasion.” We
cannot suppose that this was offensively, but merely in the way of
gesticulation, and to lend force to his words; for in his public and
literary life, Harvey showed everything but a choleric nature: he seems,
indeed, at all times to have had his temper under entire control. The
way in which Harvey himself speaks of the robbery of his apartments and
the destruction of his papers, has nothing of bitterness or acrimony in
it. With the opportunity presenting itself to him--as when he sends
Nardi the books on the Troubles in England--he is not tempted to utter
even a splenetic word against the party which had been all along opposed
to his friends, and by which he had suffered so severely. Harvey was,
probably, a marked man by Cromwell and his adherents; but had he been so
disposed he could have indulged in a little vituperation without risk of
molestation. The government of England in the Protector’s time was still
no tyranny.
Harvey appears not to have esteemed the fair sex very highly. He would
say, that “we Europeans knew not how to order or govern our women, and
that the Turks were the only people who used them wisely.” But, indeed,
if Aubrey may be trusted, he did not think very much of mankind in
general: he was wont to say, that “man was but a great mischievous
baboon.” Harvey, however, wived young, and in his age he seems still to
have thought that the old man was best tended by the gentle hand of a
woman not too far stricken in years.[68]
Harvey, in his own family circle, must have been affectionate and
kind,--characteristics of all his brothers--who appear as we have said
to have lived together through their lives in perfect amity and peace.
But our Harvey’s sympathies were not limited to his immediate relatives:
attachment, friendship was an essential ingredient in his nature. His
will from first to last is a piece of beautiful humanity, and more than
one widow and helpless woman is there provided for. He seems to have
been very anxious to live in the memory of his sisters-in-law and of his
nephews and nieces, whose legacies are mostly given to the end that they
may buy something to keep in remembrance of him. To Dr. Ent he was much
attached, and, besides his bookcases, there are ‘five pounds to buy a
ring.’ Dr. Scarborough, who also stood high in Harvey’s favour, has his
‘silver instruments of surgery and his best velvet gown.’
We cannot fancy that Harvey was at any time very eager in the pursuit of
wealth. Aubrey tells us that, “For twenty years before he died, he took
no care of his worldly concerns; but his brother Eliab, who was a very
wise and prudent manager, ordered all, not only faithfully, but better
than he could have done for himself.” The effect of this good management
was that Harvey lived, towards the end of his life, in very easy
circumstances. Having no costly establishment to maintain, for he always
lived with one or other of his brothers in his latter days, and no
family to provide for, he could afford to be munificent, as we have seen
him, to the College of Physicians, and at his death he is reported to
have left as much as 20,000_l._ to his faithful steward and kind brother
Eliab, who always meets us as the guardian angel of our anatomist, in a
worldly and material point of view. Honoured be the name and the memory
of Eliab Harvey for his good offices to one so worthy!
Though of competent estate, in the enjoyment of the highest reputation,
and trusted by two sovereign Princes in succession, Harvey never
suffered his name to be coupled with any of those lower-grade titles
that were so freely conferred in the time of both the First and Second
Charles. When we associate Harvey’s name with a title at all, it is with
the one he fairly won from his masters of Padua: by his contemporaries
he is always spoken of as Dr. Harvey; we in the present day rightly
class him with our Shakespeares, and our Miltons, and speak of him as
Harvey. Harvey, indeed, had no love of ostentation or display. The very
buildings he erected, were built “at the suggestion and under the
auspices” of others.
Harvey’s mind was largely imbued with the imaginative faculty: how
finely he brings in the classical allusion to “the Sicilian sea, dashing
among the rocks around Charybdis, hissing and foaming and tossed hither
and thither,” in illustration of those who reason against the evidence
of their senses, (p. 130.) And then what unbounded confidence he has in
Nature (p. 153), and how keenly alive he is to her beauties in every
sphere: Nature has not been sedulous to deck out animals only with
ornaments; she has further thrown an infinite variety of beautiful dyes
over the lowly and insensate herbs and flowers. (p. 426.)
In Harvey the religious sentiments appear to have been active; the
exordium to his will is unusually solemn and grand. He also evinces true
and elevated piety throughout the whole course of his work on
Generation, and seizes every opportunity of giving utterance to his
sense of the immediate agency and omnipotence of Deity. He appears, with
the ancient philosophers, to have regarded the universe and its parts as
actuated by a Supreme and all-pervading Intelligence. He was a great
admirer of Virgil, whose works were frequently in his hands, and whose
religious philosophy he seems also, in a great measure, to have adopted.
The following beautiful and often-quoted passage of his favorite author
may be said to embody his ideas on this subject, as they appear
repeatedly in the course of the work on Generation:--
“Principio cœlum ac terras camposque liquentes,
Lucentemque globum lunæ, Titaniaque astra,
Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet.”
--The heavens and earth, and ocean’s liquid plains,
The moon’s bright orb, and the Titanian stars,
Are fed by intrinsic spirit: deep infused
Through all, mind mingles with and actuates the mass.
Upon the purely Deistic notions of antiquity, however, Harvey
unquestionably ingrafted the special faith in Christianity. In connexion
with the subject of the “term utero-gestation,” he adduces the highest
recorded examples as the rule, and speaks of “Christ, our Saviour, of
men the most perfect;”[69] in the will he farther “most humbly renders
his soul to Him that gave it, and to his blessed Lord and Saviour Christ
Jesus.”
Harvey was very inquisitive into natural things and natural phenomena.
When he accompanied the Earl of Arundel, we have seen that he would
still be wandering in the woods, making observations on the strange
trees and herbs, and minerals he encountered. His industry in collecting
facts was unwearied, and the accuracy with which he himself observed
appears in every page of his writings; though we sometimes meet him
amiably credulous in regard to the observations of others,--as in that
instance where he suffers himself to be imposed upon by the traveller’s
tale of the “Genus humanum caudatum”--the race of the human kind with
tails.[70] Harvey was the first English comparative anatomist; in other
words, he was the first physiologist England produced whom superiority
of natural endowment led to perceive the relations between the meanest
and the highest of created things, and who made the simplicity of
structure and of function in the one, a means of explaining the
complexity of structure and of function in the other. “Had anatomists,”
he says, “only been as conversant with the dissection of the lower
animals as they are with that of the human body, many matters that have
hitherto kept them in a perplexity of doubt would, in my opinion, have
met them freed from every kind of difficulty.” (On the Heart, p. 35.)
Harvey makes frequent and most effectual use of his knowledge of
comparative anatomy in his earlier work; and if the reader will turn to
the one on Generation (p. 423), and peruse what is said on the subject
of ‘parts not essential to the being of the individual,’ and will then
visit the Hunterian Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, he will find that
the great comparative anatomist and physiologist of the 19th century had
a herald in the great comparative anatomist and physiologist of the 17th
century. Aubrey mentions particularly Harvey’s having “often said that
of all the losses he sustained, no grief was so crucifying to him as the
loss of his papers (containing notes of his dissections of the frog,
toad, and other animals,) which, together with his goods in his lodgings
at Whitehall, were plundered at the beginning of the rebellion.”
Harvey’s store of individual knowledge must have been great; and he
seems never to have flagged in his anxiety to learn more. He made
himself master of Oughtred’s ‘Clavis Mathematica’ in his old age,
according to Aubrey, who found him “perusing it, and working problems
not long before he dyed.”
Aubrey says “he understood Greek and Latin pretty well, but was no
critique, and he wrote very bad Latin. The Circuitus Sanguinis was, as I
take it, done into Latin by Sir George Ent, as also his booke de
Generatione Animalium; but a little booke, in 12mo, against Riolan (I
thinke) wherein he makes out his doctrine clearer, was writ by himself,
and that, as I take it, at Oxford.”[71] Aubrey, in his gossiping, is
doing injustice both to the scholarship and to the candour of Harvey. He
heard or knew that Harvey wrote an indifferent hand, and this forsooth
he turns into writing indifferent Latin. Everything points to the year
1619 as the period when the book De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (Aubrey
does not even know the title!) was written; Ent, born in 1603, was then
a lad of sixteen, and in all likelihood had never heard of Harvey’s
name; in 1628, when the work came forth at Frankfort, he was but
twenty-five, and scarcely emancipated from the leading strings of his
instructors. The Exercises to Riolan, which Aubrey cites as a specimen
of Harvey’s own latinity, are at least as well written as the Exercises
on the Heart. And then our authority evidently speaks at random in
regard to the time and place when these Exercises were composed. Harvey
never resided at Oxford after 1646, and Riolan’s Encheiridium
Anatomicum, to which Harvey’s Two Exercises were an answer, did not
appear till 1648! Harvey’s reply could not have been written by
anticipation. It came out at Cambridge the year after Riolan’s work--in
1649.
With regard to the work on Generation, again, had Ent received it in
English and turned it into Latin, this fact would certainly have been
stated; whereas, there is only the information that he played the
midwife’s part, and overlooked the press. More than this, from what Ent
says, it is evident that the printer worked from Harvey’s own MS. “As
our author writes a bad hand,” says Ent, “which no one without practice
can easily read, I have taken some pains to prevent the printer
committing any very grave blunders through this,--a point which, I
observe, has not been sufficiently attended to in a small work of his
(The Exercitatio ad Riolanum) which lately appeared.”[72] Harvey was a
man of the most liberal education, and lived in an age when every man of
liberal education wrote and conversed in Latin with ease at least, if
not always with elegance. Harvey’s Latin is generally easy, often
elegant, and not unfrequently copious and imaginative; he never seems to
feel in the least fettered by the language he is using.
Harvey, if eager in the acquirement of knowledge, was also ready at all
times to communicate what he knew, “and,” as Aubrey has it, “to instruct
any that were modest and respectful to him. In order to my journey (I
was at that time bound for Italy) he dictated to me what to see, what
company to keep, what bookes to read, how to manage my studies--in
short, he bid me go to the fountain head and read Aristotle, Cicero,
Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques s--t-breeches.”[73]
Harvey was not content merely to gather knowledge; he digested and
arranged it under the guidance of the faculties which compare and
reason. “He was always very contemplative,” pursues Aubrey, “and was
wont to frequent the leads of Cockaine-house, which his brother Eliab
had bought, having there his several stations in regard to the sun and
the wind, for the indulgence of his fancy. At the house at Combe, in
Surrey,” which, by the way, appears to have been purchased of Mr.
Cockaine, as well as the mansion in the city, “he had caves made in the
ground, in which he delighted in the summer time to meditate. He also
loved darkness,” telling Aubrey, “‘that he could then best contemplate.’
His thoughts working, would many times keep him from sleeping, in which
case his way was to rise from his bed and walk about his chamber in his
shirt, till he was pretty cool, and then return to his bed and sleep
very comfortably.” He treated the principal bodily ailment with which he
was afflicted (gout) somewhat in the same manner. The fever of the mind
being subdued by the application of cold air to the body at large, the
fever in the blood, induced by gout, was abated by the use of cold water
to the affected member: “He would then sitt with his legges bare, though
it were frost, on the leads of Cockaine-house, putt them into a payle of
water till he was almost dead with cold, and betake himself to his
stove, and so ’twas gone.”[74]
Harvey, besides being physician to the king and household, held the same
responsible situation in the families of many of the most distinguished
among the nobles and men of eminence of his time--among others to the
Lord Chancellor Bacon, whom, Aubrey informs us, “ he esteemed much for
his witt and style, but would not allow to be a great philosopher. Said
he to me, ‘He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor’--speaking in
derision.” Harvey’s penetration never failed him: the philosopher of
fact cared not for the philosopher of prescription; he who was dealing
with the Things, and, through his own inherent powers, exhibiting the
Rule, thought little of him who was at work upon abstractions, and who
only inculcated the Rule from the use which he saw others making of it.
Bacon has many admirers, but there are not wanting some in these present
times who hold, with his illustrious contemporary, that “he wrote
philosophy like a Lord Chancellor.”
Harvey was also acquainted with all the men of letters and science of
his age--with Hobbes, Dryden, Cowley, Boyle, and the rest. Dryden, in
his metrical epistle to Dr. Charleton, has these lines, of no great
merit or significance:--
“The circling streams once thought but pools of blood,
(Whether life’s fuel or the body’s food,)
From dark oblivion Harvey’s name shall save.”
Cowley is more happy in his ode on Dr. Harvey:--
“Thus Harvey sought for truth in Truth’s own book
--Creation--which by God himself was writ;
And wisely thought ’twas fit
Not to read comments only upon it,
But on th’ original itself to look.
Methinks in Art’s great circle others stand
Lock’d up together hand in hand:
Every one leads as he is led,
The same bare path they tread,
A dance like that of Fairies, a fantastic round,
With neither change of motion nor of ground.
Had Harvey to this road confined his wit,
His noble circle of the blood had been untrodden yet.”
Cowley and Harvey must often have encountered; both had the confidence
of the king, but in very different ways: Cowley lent himself to the
privacies and intrigues of the royal family and its adherents, for whom
he even consented to play the base part of spy upon their opponents. He
was also the cypher-letter writer, and the decypherer of the royal
correspondence, and thus mixed up with all the littlenesses of the court
party, by whom he must have been, as matter of course, despised, as he
was subsequently neglected. Harvey was a man of another stamp, composed
of a different clay; and it gives us a high sense of his independence
and true nobility of nature that in the midst of faction and intrigue,
he is never found associated with aught that is unworthy of the name of
man in his best estate. The war of party and the work of destruction
might be going on around; Harvey, under a hedge, and within reach of
shot, was cooly engaged with his book, or in the chamber of his friend
Dr. Bathurst, wrapt in contemplation of the mysteries of Generation.
Harvey appears to have possessed, in a remarkable degree, the power of
persuading and conciliating those with whom he came in contact. In the
whole course of his long life we hear nothing either of personal enemies
or personal enmities; “Man” he says “comes into the world naked and
unarmed, as if nature had destined him for a social creature and
ordained that he should live under equitable laws and in peace; as if
she had desired that he should be guided by reason rather than be driven
by force.”[75] The whole of the opposition to his new views on the
circulation was got up at a distance; all within his own sphere were of
his way of thinking. His brethren of the College of Physicians appear to
have revered him. The congregated fellows must have risen to their feet
by common consent as he came among them on the memorable occasion after
they had elected him their president.
Among other tastes or habits which Harvey had, Aubrey informs us that
“he was wont to drink coffee, which he and his brother Eliab did before
coffee-houses were in fashion in London.”[76] This was probably a
cherished taste with Harvey. In his will he makes a special reservation
of his “coffey-pot;”--his niece Mary West and her daughter have all his
plate except this precious utensil, which, with the residue, he
evidently desired should descend to his brother Eliab as a memorial
doubtless of the pleasure they had often enjoyed together over its
contents--the brewage from the ‘sober berry.’
In visiting his patients, Harvey “rode on horseback with a foot-cloath,
his men following on foot, as the fashion then was, which was very
decent, now quite discontinued. The judges rode also with their
foot-cloathes to Westminster Hall, which ended at the death of Sir
Robert Hyde, Lord Chief Justice; Anthony Earl of Shaftesbury would have
revived it, but several of the judges being old and ill horsemen would
not agree to it.”[77]
Harvey appears to have preserved his faculties unimpaired to the very
last. Aubrey, as we have seen, found the anatomist perusing Oughtred’s
‘Clavis Mathematica,’ and working the problems not long before he died;
and the registers of the College of Physicians further assure us that
Harvey, when very far stricken in years, still lost little or nothing of
his old activity of mind. He continued to deliver his lectures till
within a year or two of his death, when he was succeeded by his friend
Sir Charles Scarborough, and he never failed at the comitia of the
college when anything of moment was under consideration.
Accumulating years, however, and repeated attacks of gout, to which
Harvey had long been a martyr, at length asserted their mastery over the
declining body, and William Harvey, the great in intellect, the noble in
nature, finally ceased to be, on the 3d of June, 1657, in the eightieth
year of his age. About ten o’clock in the morning, as Aubrey tells us,
on attempting to speak, he found that he had lost the power of
utterance, that, in the language of the vulgar, he had the dead palsy in
his tongue. He did not lose his other faculties, however; but knowing
that his end was approaching, he sent for his nephews, to each of whom
he gave some token of remembrance,--his watch to one, his signet ring to
another, and so on. He farther made signs to Sambroke, his apothecary,
to let him blood in the tongue; but this did little or no good, and by
and by, in the evening of the day on which he was stricken, he died;
“the palsy,” as Aubrey has it, “giving him an easy passport.”[78]
The funeral took place a few days afterwards, the body being attended
far beyond the walls of the city by a long train of his friends of the
College of Physicians, and the remains were finally deposited “in a
vault at Hempstead, in Essex, which his brother Eliab had built; he was
lapt in lead, and on his breast, in great letters, his name--DR. WILLIAM
HARVEY. * * * I was at his funeral,” continues Aubrey, “and helpt to
carry him into the vault.” And there, at this hour, he lies, the lead
that laps him little changed, and showing indistinctly the outline of
the form within; for he lies not in an ordinary coffin, but the
cerements that surround the body immediately invested in their turn by
the lead.
So lived, so died one of the great men whom God, in virtue of his
eternal laws, bids to appear on earth from time to time to enlighten,
and to ennoble mankind.[79]
THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF WILLIAM HARVEY. M.D.
_Extracted from the Registry of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury._
In the name of the Almighty and Eternal God Amen I WILLIAM HARVEY of
London Doctor of Physicke doe by these presents make and ordaine this my
last Will and testament in manner and forme following Revoking hereby
all former and other wills and testaments whatsoever Imprimis I doe most
humbly render my soule to Him that gave it and to my blessed Lord and
Saviour Christ Jesus and my bodie to the Earth to be buried at the
discretion of my executor herein after named The personall estate which
at the time of my decease I shalbe in any way possessed of either in Law
or equitie be it in goods householdstuffe readie moneys debts duties
arrearages of rents or any other wayes whatsoever and whereof I shall
not by this present will or by some Codicill to be hereunto annexed make
a particular gift and disposition I doe after my debts Funeralls and
Legacies paid and discharged give and bequeath the same vnto my loving
brother Mr. Eliab Harvey merchant of London whome I make Executor of
this my last will and testament And whereas I have lately purchased
certaine lands in Northamptonshire or thereabouts commonly knowne by the
name of Oxon grounds and formally belonging vnto to the Earl of
Manchester and certaine other grounds in Leicestershire commonly called
or knowne by the name of Baron Parke and sometime heretofore belonging
vnto Sir Henry Hastings Knight both which purchases were made in the
name of several persons nominated and trusted by me and by two severall
deeds of declaracon vnder the hands and seales of all persons any waye
parties or privies to the said trusts are declared to be first vpon
trust and to the intent that I should be permitted to enioye all the
rents and profits and the benefit of the collaterall securitie during my
life and from and after my decease Then upon trust and for the benefit
of such person and persons and of and for such estate and estates and
Interests And for raysing and payment of such summe and summes of Money
Rents Charges Annuities and yearly payments to and for such purposes as
from time to time by any writing or writings to be by me signed and
sealed in the presence of Two or more credible witnesses or by my last
will and testament in writing should declare limit direct or appoint And
further in trust that the said Mannors and lands and everie part thereof
together with the Collaterall securitie should be assigned conveyed and
assured vnto such persons and for suche Estates as the same should by me
be limited and directed charged and chargeable nevertheles with all
Annuities rents and summes of money by me limited and appointed if any
such shalbe And in default of such appointment then to Eliab Harvey his
heires executors and Assignes or to such as he or they shall nominate as
by the said two deeds of declaracon both of them bearing date the tenth
day of July in the year of our Lord God one Thousand sixe hundred Fiftie
and one more at large it doth appeare I doe now hereby declare limit
direct and appoint that with all convenient speed after my decease there
shalbe raised satisfied and paid these severall summes of money Rents
Charges and Annuities herein after expressed and likewise all such other
summes of Money Rents Charges or Annuities which at any time hereafter
in any Codicill to be hereunto annexed shall happen to be limited or
expressed And first I appoint so much money to be raised and laid out
vpon that building which I have already begun to erect within the
Colledge of Physicians in London as will serve to finish the same
according to the designe already made Item I give and bequeath vnto my
lo sister in Law Mrs Eliab Harvey one hundred pounds to buy something to
keepe in remembrance of me Item I give to my Niece Mary Pratt all
that Linnen householdstuffe and furniture which I have at Coome neere
Croydon for the vse of Will Foulkes and to whom his keeping shalbe
assigned after her death or before me at any time Item I give vnto
my Niece Mary West and her daughter Amy West halfe the Linnen I shall
leave at London in my chests and Chambers together with all my plate
excepting my Coffey pot Item I give to my lo sister Eliab all the
other halfe of my Linnen which I shall leave behind me Item I give
to my lo sister Daniell at Lambeth and to everie one of her children
severally the summe of fiftie pounds Item I give to my lo Coosin Mr
Heneage Finch for his paines counsell and advice about the contriving of
this my will one hundred pounds Item I give to all my little
Godchildren Nieces and Nephews severally to everie one Fiftie pounds
Item I give and bequeath to the towne of Foulkestone where I was
borne two hundred pounds to be bestowed by the advice of the Mayor
thereof and my Executor for the best vse of the poore Item I give to
the poore of Christ hospitall in Smithfield thirtie pounds Item I give
to Will Harvey my godsonne the sonne of my brother Mich Harvey deceased
one hundred pounds and to his brother Michaell Fiftie pounds Item I
give to my Nephew Tho Cullen and his children one hundred pounds and to
his brother my godsonne Will Cullen one hundred pounds Item I give to my
Nephew Jhon Harvey the sonne of my lo brother Tho Harvey deceased two
hundred pounds Item I give to my Servant John Raby for his diligence
in my service and sicknesse twentie pounds And to Alice Garth my
Servant Tenne pounds over and above what I am already owing unto her by
my bill which was her mistresses legacie Item I give among the poor
children of Amy Rigdon daughter of my lo vncle Mr Tho Halke twentie
pounds Item among other my poorest kindred one hundred pounds to be
distributed at the appointment of my Executor Item I give among the
servants of my sister Dan at my Funeralls Five pounds And likewise among
the servants of my Nephew Dan Harvey at Coome as much Item I give to
my Cousin Mary Tomes Fifty pounds Item I give to my lo Friend Mr
Prestwood one hundred pounds Item I give to everie one of my lo
brother Eliab his sonnes and daughters severally Fiftie pounds apiece
All which legacies and gifts aforesaid are chiefly to buy something to
keepe in remembrance of me Item I give among the servants of my
brother Eliab which shalbe dwelling with him at the time of my decease
tenne pounds Furthermore I give and bequeath vnto my Sister Eliabs
Sister Mrs Coventrey a widowe during her natural life the yearly rent or
summe of twentie pounds Item I give to my Niece Mary West during her
naturall life the yearly rent or summe of Fortie pounds Item I give
for the vse and behoofe and better ordering of Will Foulkes for and
during the term of his life vnto my Niece Mary Pratt the yearly rent of
tenne pounds which summe if it happen my said Niece shall dye before him
I desire may be paid to them to whome his keeping shalbe appointed
Item I will that the twentie pounds which I yearly allowe him my
brother Galen Browne may be continued as a legacie from his sister
during his naturall life Item I will that the payments to Mr Samuel
Fentons children out of the profits of Buckholt Lease be orderly
performed as my deere deceased lo wife gave order so long as that lease
shall stand good Item I give vnto Alice Garth during her naturall
life the yearly rent or summe of twentie pounds Item To John Raby
during his naturall life sixteene pounds yearly rent All which yearly
rents or summes to be paid halfe yearly at the two most vsuall feasts in
the yeare viz Michaelmas and our Lady day without any deduction for or
by reason of any manner of taxes to be any way hereafter imposed The
first payment of all the said rents or Annuities respectively to beginne
at such of those feasts which shall first happen next after my decease
Thus I give the remainder of my lands vnto my lo brother Eliab and his
heires All my legacies and gifts &c. being performed and discharged
Touching my bookes and householdstuffe Pictures and apparell of which I
have not already disposed I give to the Colledge of Physicians all my
bookes and papers and my best Persia long Carpet and my blue sattin
imbroyedyed Cushion one paire of brasse Andirons with fireshovell and
tongues of brasse for the ornament of the meeting roome I have erected
for that purpose Item I give my velvet gowne to my lo friend Mr
Doctor Scarbrough desiring him and my lo friend Mr Doctor Ent to looke
over those scattered remnant of my poore Librarie and what bookes papers
or rare collections they shall thinke fit to present to the Colledge and
the rest to be Sold and with the money buy better And for their paines I
give to Mr Doctor Ent all the presses and shelves he please to make use
of and five pounds to buy him a ring to keepe or weare in remembrance of
me And to Doctor Scarbrough All my little silver instruments of surgerie
Item I give all my Chamber furniture tables bed bedding hangings which I
have at Lambeth to my Sister Dan and her daughter Sarah And all that at
London to my lo Sister Eliab and her daughter or my godsonne Eliab as
she shall appoint Lastly I desire my executor to assigne over the
custode of Will Fowkes after the death of my Niece Mary Pratt if she
happen to dye before him vnto the Sister of the said William my Niece
Mary West Thus I have finished my last Will in three pages two of them
written with own hand and my name subscribed to everie one with my hand
and seal to the last
WILL HARVEY
Signed sealed and published as the last will and testament of me William
Harvey In the presence of us Edward Dering Henneage Finch Richard Flud
Francis Finche Item I have since written a Codicill with my owne hand in
a sheet of paper to be added hereto with my name thereto subscribed and
my seale.
ITEM I will that the sumes and charges here specified be added and
annexed vnto my last will and testament published heretofore in the
presence of Sir Edward Dering and Mr Henneage Finch and others and as a
Codicill by my Executor in like manner to be performed whereby I will
and bequeath to John Denn sonne of Vincent Denne the summe of thirtie
pounds. Item to my good friend Mr Tho Hobbs to buy something to keepe in
remembrance of me tenne pounds and to Mr Kennersley in like manner
twentie pounds Item what moneys shalbe due to me from Mr Hen Thompson
his fees being discharged I give to my friend Mr Prestwood Item what
money is of mine viz one hundred pounds in the hands of my Cosin Rigdon
I give halfe thereof to him towards the marriage of his niece and the
other halfe to be given to Mrs Coventrey for her sonne Walter when he
shall come of yeares and for vse my Cosin Rigdon giving securitie I
would he should pay none Item what money shalbe due to me and Alice
Garth my servant on a pawne now in the hands of Mr Prestwood I will
after my decease shall all be given my said servant for her diligence
about me in my siknesse and service both interest and principall Item if
in case it so fall out that my good friend Mrs Coventrey during her
widowhood shall not dyet on freecost with my brother or Sister Eliab
Harvey Then I will and bequeath to her one hundred marke yearly daring
her widowhood Item I will and bequeath to my loving Cosin Mr Henneage
Finch (more than heretofore) to be for my godsonne Will Finche one
hundred pounds Item I will and bequeath yearly during her life a rent of
thirtie pounds vnto Mrs Jane Nevison Widdowe in case she shall not
preferre her selfe in marriage to be paid quarterly by even porcons the
first to beginn at Christmas Michaelmas or Lady day or Midsummer which
first happens after my decease Item I give to my Goddaughter Mrs Eliz
Glover daughter of my Cosin Toomes the yearly rent of tenne pounds from
my decease vnto the end of five years Item to her brother Mr Rich Toomes
thirty pounds as a legacie Item I give to John Cullen sonne of Tho
Cullen deceased all what I have formerly given his father and more one
hundred pounds Item I will that what I have bequeathed to my Niece Mary
West be given to her husband my Cosin Rob West for his daughter Amy West
Item what should have bene to my Sister Dan deceased I will be given my
lo Niece her daughter in Law Item I give my Cosin Mrs Mary Ranton fortie
pounds to buy something to keep in remembrance of me Item to my nephews
Michaell and Will the sonnes of my brother Mich one hundred pounds to
either of them Item all the furniture of my chamber and all the hangings
I give to my godsonne Mr Eliab Harvey at his marriage and all my red
damaske furniture and plate to my Cosin Mary Harvey Item I give my best
velvet gowne to Doctor Scarbrowe.
WILL HARVEY.
Memorandum that upon Sunday the twentie eighth day of December in the
yeare of our Lord one thousand sixe hundred fiftie sixe I did againe
peruse my last will which formerly conteined three pages and hath now
this fourth page added to it And I doe now this present Sunday December
28 1656 publish and declare these foure pages whereof the three last are
written with my owne hand to be my last will In the presence of Henneage
Finch John Raby.
* * * * *
THIS WILL with the Codicill annexed was proved at London on the second
day of May In the yeare of our Lord God one Thousand six hundred fiftie
nine before the Judge for probate of wills and granting Adcons lawfully
authorized By the oath of Eliab Harvey the Brother and sole executor
therein named To whom Administracon of all and singular the goods
Chattells and debts of the said deceased was granted and committed He
being first sworne truely to administer.[80]
CHAS. DYNELEY }
JOHN IGGULDEN } _Deputy_
W. F. GOSTLING} _Registers._
AN ANATOMICAL DISQUISITION
ON THE
MOTION OF THE HEART AND BLOOD IN ANIMALS.
TO
THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND INDOMITABLE PRINCE,
CHARLES,
KING OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND IRELAND, DEFENDER OF THE FAITH.
MOST ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE!
The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of
everything within them, the sun of their microcosm, that upon which all
growth depends, from which all power proceeds. The King, in like manner,
is the foundation of his kingdom, the sun of the world around him, the
heart of the republic, the fountain whence all power, all grace doth
flow. What I have here written of the motions of the heart I am the more
emboldened to present to your Majesty, according to the custom of the
present age, because almost all things human are done after human
examples, and many things in a King are after the pattern of the heart.
The knowledge of his heart, therefore, will not be useless to a Prince,
as embracing a kind of Divine example of his functions,--and it has
still been usual with men to compare small things with great. Here, at
all events, best of Princes, placed as you are on the pinnacle of human
affairs, you may at once contemplate the prime mover in the body of man,
and the emblem of your own sovereign power. Accept therefore, with your
wonted clemency, I most humbly beseech you, illustrious Prince, this, my
new Treatise on the Heart; you, who are yourself the new light of this
age, and indeed its very heart; a Prince abounding in virtue and in
grace, and to whom we gladly refer all the blessings which England
enjoys, all the pleasure we have in our lives.
Your Majesty’s most devoted servant,
WILLIAM HARVEY.
[LONDON ...
1628.]
To his very dear Friend, DOCTOR ARGENT, the excellent and
accomplished President of the Royal College of Physicians, and to
other learned Physicians, his most esteemed Colleagues.
I have already and repeatedly presented you, my learned friends, with my
new views of the motion and function of the heart, in my anatomical
lectures; but having now for nine years and more confirmed these views
by multiplied demonstrations in your presence, illustrated them by
arguments, and freed them from the objections of the most learned and
skilful anatomists, I at length yield to the requests, I might say
entreaties, of many, and here present them for general consideration in
this treatise.
* * * * *
Were not the work indeed presented through you, my learned friends, I
should scarce hope that it could come out scatheless and complete; for
you have in general been the faithful witnesses of almost all the
instances from which I have either collected the truth or confuted
error; you have seen my dissections, and at my demonstrations of all
that I maintain to be objects of sense, you have been accustomed to
stand by and bear me out with your testimony. And as this book alone
declares the blood to course and revolve by a new route, very different
from the ancient and beaten pathway trodden for so many ages, and
illustrated by such a host of learned and distinguished men, I was
greatly afraid lest I might be charged with presumption did I lay my
work before the public at home, or send it beyond seas for impression,
unless I had first proposed its subject to you, had confirmed its
conclusions by ocular demonstrations in your presence, had replied to
your doubts and objections, and secured the assent and support of our
distinguished President. For I was most intimately persuaded, that if I
could make good my proposition before you and our College, illustrious
by its numerous body of learned individuals, I had less to fear from
others; I even ventured to hope that I should have the comfort of
finding all that you had granted me in your sheer love of truth,
conceded by others who were philosophers like yourselves. For true
philosophers, who are only eager for truth and knowledge, never regard
themselves as already so thoroughly informed, but that they welcome
further information from whomsoever and from whencesoever it may come;
nor are they so narrow-minded as to imagine any of the arts or sciences
transmitted to us by the ancients, in such a state of forwardness or
completeness, that nothing is left for the ingenuity and industry of
others; very many, on the contrary, maintain that all we know is still
infinitely less than all that still remains unknown; nor do philosophers
pin their faith to others’ precepts in such wise that they lose their
liberty, and cease to give credence to the conclusions of their proper
senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity,
that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend
Truth. But even as they see that the credulous and vain are disposed at
the first blush to accept and to believe everything that is proposed to
them, so do they observe that the dull and unintellectual are indisposed
to see what lies before their eyes, and even to deny the light of the
noonday sun. They teach us in our course of philosophy as sedulously to
avoid the fables of the poets and the fancies of the vulgar, as the
false conclusions of the sceptics. And then the studious, and good, and
true, never suffer their minds to be warped by the passions of hatred
and envy, which unfit men duly to weigh the arguments that are advanced
in behalf of truth, or to appreciate the proposition that is even fairly
demonstrated; neither do they think it unworthy of them to change their
opinion if truth and undoubted demonstration require them so to do; nor
do they esteem it discreditable to desert error, though sanctioned by
the highest antiquity; for they know full well that to err, to be
deceived, is human; that many things are discovered by accident, and
that many may be learned indifferently from any quarter, by an old man
from a youth, by a person of understanding from one of inferior
capacity.
* * * * *
My dear colleagues, I had no purpose to swell this treatise into a large
volume by quoting the names and writings of anatomists, or to make a
parade of the strength of my memory, the extent of my reading, and the
amount of my pains; because I profess both to learn and to teach
anatomy, not from books but from dissections; not from the positions of
philosophers but from the fabric of nature; and then because I do not
think it right or proper to strive to take from the ancients any honour
that is their due, nor yet to dispute with the moderns, and enter into
controversy with those who have excelled in anatomy and been my
teachers. I would not charge with wilful falsehood any one who was
sincerely anxious for truth, nor lay it to any one’s door as a crime
that he had fallen into error. I avow myself the partisan of truth
alone; and I can indeed say that I have used all my endeavours, bestowed
all my pains on an attempt to produce something that should be agreeable
to the good, profitable to the learned, and useful to letters.
Farewell, most worthy Doctors,
And think kindly of your Anatomist,
WILLIAM HARVEY.
AN ANATOMICAL DISQUISITION
ON THE
MOTION OF THE HEART AND BLOOD IN ANIMALS.
INTRODUCTION.
As we are about to discuss the motion, action, and use of the heart and
arteries, it is imperative on us first to state what has been thought of
these things by others in their writings, and what has been held by the
vulgar and by tradition, in order that what is true may be confirmed,
and what is false set right by dissection, multiplied experience, and
accurate observation.
Almost all anatomists, physicians, and philosophers, up to the present
time, have supposed, with Galen, that the object of the pulse was the
same as that of respiration, and only differed in one particular, this
being conceived to depend on the animal, the respiration on the vital
faculty; the two, in all other respects, whether with reference to
purpose or to motion, comporting themselves alike. Whence it is
affirmed, as by Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, in his book on
‘Respiration,’ which has lately appeared, that as the pulsation of the
heart and arteries does not suffice for the ventilation and
refrigeration of the blood, therefore were the lungs fashioned to
surround the heart. From this it appears, that whatever has hitherto
been said upon the systole and diastole, on the motion of the heart and
arteries, has been said with especial reference to the lungs.
But as the structure and movements of the heart differ from those of the
lungs, and the motions of the arteries from those of the chest, so seems
it likely that other ends and offices will thence arise, and that the
pulsations and uses of the heart, likewise of the arteries, will differ
in many respects from the heavings and uses of the chest and lungs. For
did the arterial pulse and the respiration serve the same ends; did the
arteries in their diastole take air into their cavities, as commonly
stated, and in their systole emit fuliginous vapours by the same pores
of the flesh and skin; and further, did they, in the time intermediate
between the diastole and the systole, contain air, and at all times
either air, or spirits, or fuliginous vapours, what should then be said
to Galen, who wrote a book on purpose to show that by nature the
arteries contained blood, and nothing but blood; neither spirits nor
air, consequently, as may be readily gathered from the experiments and
reasonings contained in the same book? Now if the arteries are filled in
the diastole with air then taken into them (a larger quantity of air
penetrating when the pulse is large and full), it must come to pass,
that if you plunge into a bath of water or of oil when the pulse is
strong and full, it ought forthwith to become either smaller or much
slower, since the circumambient bath will render it either difficult or
impossible for the air to penetrate. In like manner, as all the
arteries, those that are deep-seated as well as those that are
superficial, are dilated at the same instant, and with the same
rapidity, how were it possible that air should penetrate to the deeper
parts as freely and quickly through the skin, flesh, and other
structures, as through the mere cuticle? And how should the arteries of
the fœtus draw air into their cavities through the abdomen of the mother
and the body of the womb? And how should seals, whales, dolphins and
other cetaceans, and fishes of every description, living in the depths
of the sea, take in and emit air by the diastole and systole of their
arteries through the infinite mass of waters? For to say that they
absorb the air that is infixed in the water, and emit their fumes into
this medium, were to utter something very like a mere figment. And if
the arteries in their systole expel fuliginous vapours from their
cavities through the pores of the flesh and skin, why not the Spirits,
which are said to be contained in these vessels, at the same time, since
spirits are much more subtile than fuliginous vapours or smoke? And
further, if the arteries take in and cast out air in the systole and
diastole, like the lungs in the process of respiration, wherefore do
they not do the same thing when a wound is made in one of them, as is
done in the operation of arteriotomy? When the windpipe is divided, it
is sufficiently obvious that the air enters and returns through the
wound by two opposite movements; but when an artery is divided, it is
equally manifest that blood escapes in one continuous stream, and that
no air either enters or issues. If the pulsations of the arteries fan
and refrigerate the several parts of the body as the lungs do the heart,
how comes it, as is commonly said, that the arteries carry the vital
blood into the different parts, abundantly charged with vital spirits,
which cherish the heat of these parts, sustain them when asleep, and
recruit them when exhausted? and how should it happen that, if you tie
the arteries, immediately the parts not only become torpid, and frigid,
and look pale, but at length cease even to be nourished? This, according
to Galen, is because they are deprived of the heat which flowed through
all parts from the heart, as its source; whence it would appear that the
arteries rather carry warmth to the parts than serve for any fanning or
refrigeration. Besides, how can the diastole [of the arteries] draw
spirits from the heart to warm the body and its parts, and, from
without, means of cooling or tempering them? Still further, although
some affirm that the lungs, arteries, and heart have all the same
offices, they yet maintain that the heart is the workshop of the
spirits, and that the arteries contain and transmit them; denying,
however, in opposition to the opinion of Columbus, that the lungs can
either make or contain spirits; and then they assert, with Galen,
against Erasistratus, that it is blood, not spirits, which is contained
in the arteries.
These various opinions are seen to be so incongruous and mutually
subversive, that every one of them is not unjustly brought under
suspicion. That it is blood and blood alone which is contained in the
arteries is made manifest by the experiment of Galen, by arteriotomy,
and by wounds; for from a single artery divided, as Galen himself
affirms in more than one place, the whole of the blood may be withdrawn
in the course of half an hour, or less. The experiment of Galen alluded
to is this: “If you include a portion of an artery between two
ligatures, and slit it open lengthways, you will find nothing but
blood;” and thus he proves that the arteries contain blood only. And we
too may be permitted to proceed by a like train of reasoning: if we find
the same blood in the arteries that we find in the veins, which we have
tied in the same way, as I have myself repeatedly ascertained, both in
the dead body and in living animals, we may fairly conclude that the
arteries contain the same blood as the veins, and nothing but the same
blood. Some, whilst they attempt to lessen the difficulty here,
affirming that the blood is spirituous and arterious, virtually concede
that the office of the arteries is to carry blood from the heart into
the whole of the body, and that they are therefore filled with blood;
for spirituous blood is not the less blood on that account. And then no
one denies that the blood as such, even the portion of it which flows in
the veins, is imbued with spirits. But if that portion which is
contained in the arteries be richer in spirits, it is still to be
believed that these spirits are inseparable from the blood, like those
in the veins; that the blood and spirits constitute one body (like whey
and butter in milk, or heat [and water] in hot water), with which the
arteries are charged, and for the distribution of which from the heart
they are provided, and that this body is nothing else than blood. But if
this blood be said to be drawn from the heart into the arteries by the
diastole of these vessels, it is then assumed that the arteries by their
distension are filled with blood, and not with the ambient air, as
heretofore; for if they be said also to become filled with air from the
ambient atmosphere, how and when, I ask, can they receive blood from the
heart? If it be answered: during the systole; I say, that seems
impossible; the arteries would then have to fill whilst they contracted;
in other words, to fill, and yet not become distended. But if it be
said: during the diastole, they would then, and for two opposite
purposes, be receiving both blood and air, and heat and cold; which is
improbable. Further, when it is affirmed that the diastole of the heart
and arteries is simultaneous, and the systole of the two is also
concurrent, there is another incongruity. For how can two bodies
mutually connected, which are simultaneously distended, attract or draw
anything from one another; or, being simultaneously contracted, receive
anything from each other? And then, it seems impossible that one body
can thus attract another body into itself, so as to become distended,
seeing that to be distended is to be passive, unless, in the manner of a
sponge, previously compressed by an external force, whilst it is
returning to its natural state. But it is difficult to conceive that
there can be anything of this kind in the arteries. The arteries dilate,
because they are filled like bladders or leathern bottles; they are not
filled because they expand like bellows. This I think easy of
demonstration; and indeed conceive that I have already proved it.
Nevertheless, in that book of Galen headed ‘Quod Sanguis continetur in
Arteriis,’ he quotes an experiment to prove the contrary: An artery
having been exposed, is opened longitudinally, and a reed or other
pervious tube, by which the blood is prevented from being lost, and the
wound is closed, is inserted into the vessel through the opening. “So
long,” he says, “as things are thus arranged, the whole artery will
pulsate; but if you now throw a ligature about the vessel and tightly
compress its tunics over the tube, you will no longer see the artery
beating beyond the ligature.” I have never performed this experiment of
Galen’s, nor do I think that it could very well be performed in the
living body, on account of the profuse flow of blood that would take
place from the vessel which was operated on; neither would the tube
effectually close the wound in the vessel without a ligature; and I
cannot doubt but that the blood would be found to flow out between the
tube and the vessel. Still Galen appears by this experiment to prove
both that the pulsative faculty extends from the heart by the walls of
the arteries, and that the arteries, whilst they dilate, are filled by
that pulsific force, because they expand like bellows, and do not dilate
because they are filled like skins. But the contrary is obvious in
arteriotomy and in wounds; for the blood spurting from the arteries
escapes with force, now farther, now not so far, alternately, or in
jets; and the jet always takes place with the diastole of the artery,
never with the systole. By which it clearly appears that the artery is
dilated by the impulse of the blood; for of itself it would not throw
the blood to such a distance, and whilst it was dilating; it ought
rather to draw air into its cavity through the wound, were those things
true that are commonly stated concerning the uses of the arteries. Nor
let the thickness of the arterial tunics impose upon us, and lead us to
conclude that the pulsative property proceeds along them from the heart.
For in several animals the arteries do not apparently differ from the
veins; and in extreme parts of the body, where the arteries are minutely
subdivided, as in the brain, the hand, &c., no one could distinguish the
arteries from the veins by the dissimilar characters of their coats; the
tunics of both are identical. And then, in an aneurism proceeding from a
wounded or eroded artery, the pulsation is precisely the same as in the
other arteries, and yet it has no proper arterial tunic. This the
learned Riolanus testifies to, along with me, in his Seventh Book.
Nor let any one imagine that the uses of the pulse and the respiration
are the same, because under the influence of the same causes, such as
running, anger, the warm bath, or any other heating thing, as Galen
says, they become more frequent and forcible together. For, not only is
experience in opposition to this idea, though Galen endeavours to
explain it away, when we see that with excessive repletion the pulse
beats more forcibly, whilst the respiration is diminished in amount; but
in young persons the pulse is quick, whilst respiration is slow. So is
it also in alarm, and amidst care, and under anxiety of mind; sometimes,
too, in fevers, the pulse is rapid, but the respiration is slower than
usual.
These and other objections of the same kind may be urged against the
opinions mentioned. Nor are the views that are entertained of the
offices and pulse of the heart, perhaps, less bound up with great and
most inextricable difficulties. The heart, it is vulgarly said, is the
fountain and workshop of the vital spirits, the centre from whence life
is dispensed to the several parts of the body; and yet it is denied that
the right ventricle makes spirits; it is rather held to supply
nourishment to the lungs; whence it is maintained that fishes are
without any right ventricle (and indeed every animal wants a right
ventricle which is unfurnished with lungs), and that the right ventricle
is present solely for the sake of the lungs.
1. Why, I ask, when we see that the structure of both ventricles is
almost identical, there being the same apparatus of fibres, and braces,
and valves, and vessels, and auricles, and in both the same infarction
of blood, in the subjects of our dissections, of the like black colour,
and coagulated--why, I say, should their uses be imagined to be
different, when the action, motion, and pulse of both are the same? If
the three tricuspid valves placed at the entrance into the right
ventricle prove obstacles to the reflux of the blood into the vena cava,
and if the three semilunar valves which are situated at the commencement
of the pulmonary artery be there, that they may prevent the return of
the blood into the ventricle; wherefore, when we find similar structures
in connexion with the left ventricle, should we deny that they are
there for the same end, of preventing here the egress, there the
regurgitation of the blood?
2. And again, when we see that these structures, in point of size, form,
and situation, are almost in every respect the same in the left as in
the right ventricle, wherefore should it be maintained that things are
here arranged in connexion with the egress and regress of spirits,
there, i.e. in the right, of blood. The same arrangement cannot be held
fitted to favour or impede the motion of blood and of spirits
indifferently.
3. And when we observe that the passages and vessels are severally in
relation to one another in point of size, viz., the pulmonary artery to
the pulmonary veins; wherefore should the one be imagined destined to a
private or particular purpose, that to wit, of nourishing the lungs, the
other to a public and general function?
4. And, as Realdus Columbus says, how can it be conceived that such a
quantity of blood should be required for the nutrition of the lungs; the
vessel that leads to them, the vena arteriosa or pulmonary artery being
of greater capacity than both the iliac veins?
5. And I ask further; as the lungs are so close at hand, and in
continual motion, and the vessel that supplies them is of such
dimensions, what is the use or meaning of the pulse of the right
ventricle? and why was nature reduced to the necessity of adding another
ventricle for the sole purpose of nourishing the lungs?
When it is said that the left ventricle obtains materials for the
formation of spirits, air to wit, and blood, from the lungs and right
sinuses of the heart, and in like manner sends spirituous blood into the
aorta, drawing fuliginous vapours from thence, and sending them by the
arteria venosa into the lungs, whence spirits are at the same time
obtained for transmission into the aorta, I ask how, and by what means,
is the separation effected? and how comes it that spirits and fuliginous
vapours can pass hither and thither without admixture or confusion? If
the mitral cuspidate valves do not prevent the egress of fuliginous
vapours to the lungs, how should they oppose the escape of air? and how
should the semilunars hinder the regress of spirits from the aorta upon
each supervening diastole of the heart? and, above all, how can they say
that the spirituous blood is sent from the arteria venalis (pulmonary
veins) by the left ventricle into the lungs without any obstacle to its
passage from the mitral valves, when they have previously asserted that
the air entered by the same vessel from the lungs into the left
ventricle, and have brought forward these same mitral valves as
obstacles to its retrogression? Good God! how should the mitral valves
prevent regurgitation of air and not of blood?
Further, when they dedicate the vena arteriosa (or pulmonary artery), a
vessel of great size, and having the tunics of an artery, to none but a
kind of private and single purpose, that, namely, of nourishing the
lungs, why should the arteria venalis (or pulmonary vein), which is
scarcely of similar size, which has the coats of a vein, and is soft and
lax, be presumed to be made for many--three or four, different uses? For
they will have it that air passes through this vessel from the lungs
into the left ventricle; that fuliginous vapours escape by it from the
heart into the lungs; and that a portion of the spirituous or
spiritualized blood is distributed by it to the lungs for their
refreshment.
If they will have it that fumes and air--fumes flowing from, air
proceeding towards the heart--are transmitted by the same conduit, I
reply, that nature is not wont to institute but one vessel, to contrive
but one way for such contrary motions and purposes, nor is anything of
the kind seen elsewhere.
If fumes or fuliginous vapours and air permeate this vessel, as they do
the pulmonary bronchia, wherefore do we find neither air nor fuliginous
vapours when we divide the arteria venosa? why do we always find this
vessel full of sluggish blood, never of air? whilst in the lungs we find
abundance of air remaining.
If any one will perform Galen’s experiment of dividing the trachea of a
living dog, forcibly distending the lungs with a pair of bellows, and
then tying the trachea securely, he will find, when he has laid open the
thorax, abundance of air in the lungs, even to their extreme investing
tunic, but none in either the pulmonary veins, or left ventricle of the
heart. But did the heart either attract air from the lungs, or did the
lungs transmit any air to the heart, in the living dog, by so much the
more ought this to be the case in the experiment just referred to. Who,
indeed, doubts that, did he inflate the lungs of a subject in the
dissecting-room, he would instantly see the air making its way by this
route, were there actually any such passage for it? But this office of
the pulmonary veins, namely, the transference of air from the lungs to
the heart, is held of such importance, that Hieronymus Fabricius, of
Aquapendente, maintains the lungs were made for the sake of this vessel,
and that it constitutes the principal element in their structure.
But I should like to be informed wherefore, if the pulmonary vein were
destined for the conveyance of air, it has the structure of a
blood-vessel here. Nature had rather need of annular tubes, such as
those of the bronchia, in order that they might always remain open, not
have been liable to collapse; and that they might continue entirely free
from blood, lest the liquid should interfere with the passage of the
air, as it so obviously does when the lungs labour from being either
greatly oppressed or loaded in a less degree with phlegm, as they are
when the breathing is performed with a sibilous or rattling noise.
Still less is that opinion to be tolerated which (as a two-fold matter,
one aëreal, one sanguineous, is required for the composition of vital
spirits,) supposes the blood to ooze through the septum of the heart
from the right to the left ventricle by certain secret pores, and the
air to be attracted from the lungs through the great vessel, the
pulmonary vein; and which will have it, consequently, that there are
numerous pores in the septum cordis adapted for the transmission of the
blood. But, in faith, no such pores can be demonstrated, neither in fact
do any such exist. For the septum of the heart is of a denser and more
compact structure than any portion of the body, except the bones and
sinews. But even supposing that there were foramina or pores in this
situation, how could one of the ventricles extract anything from the
other--the left, e.g. obtain blood from the right, when we see that both
ventricles contract and dilate simultaneously? Wherefore should we not
rather believe that the right took spirits from the left, than that the
left obtained blood from the right ventricle, through these foramina?
But it is certainly mysterious and incongruous that blood should be
supposed to be most commodiously drawn through a set of obscure or
invisible pores, and air through perfectly open passages, at one and the
same moment. And why, I ask, is recourse had to secret and invisible
porosities, to uncertain and obscure channels, to explain the passage of
the blood into the left ventricle, when there is so open a way through
the pulmonary veins? I own it has always appeared extraordinary to me
that they should have chosen to make, or rather to imagine, a way
through the thick, hard, and extremely compact substance of the septum
cordis, rather than to take that by the open vas venosum or pulmonary
vein, or even through the lax, soft and spongy substance of the lungs at
large. Besides, if the blood could permeate the substance of the septum,
or could be imbibed from the ventricles, what use were there for the
coronary artery and vein, branches of which proceed to the septum
itself, to supply it with nourishment? And what is especially worthy of
notice is this: if in the fœtus, where everything is more lax and soft,
nature saw herself reduced to the necessity of bringing the blood from
the right into the left side of the heart by the foramen ovale, from the
vena cava through the arteria venosa, how should it be likely that in
the adult she should pass it so commodiously, and without an effort,
through the septum ventriculorum, which has now become denser by age?
Andreas Laurentius,[81] resting on the authority of Galen[82] and the
experience of Hollerius, asserts and proves that the serum and pus in
empyema, absorbed from the cavities of the chest into the pulmonary
vein, may be expelled and got rid of with the urine and fæces through
the left ventricle of the heart and arteries. He quotes the case of a
certain person affected with melancholia, and who suffered from repeated
fainting fits, who was relieved from the paroxysms on passing a quantity
of turbid, fetid, and acrid urine; but he died at last, worn out by the
disease; and when the body came to be opened after death, no fluid like
that he had micturated was discovered either in the bladder or in the
kidneys; but in the left ventricle of the heart and cavity of the thorax
plenty of it was met with; and then Laurentius boasts that he had
predicted the cause of the symptoms. For my own part, however, I cannot
but wonder, since he had divined and predicted that heterogeneous matter
could be discharged by the course he indicates, why he could not or
would not perceive, and inform us that, in the natural state of things,
the blood might be commodiously transferred from the lungs to the left
ventricle of the heart by the very same route.
Since, therefore, from the foregoing considerations and many others to
the same effect, it is plain that what has heretofore been said
concerning the motion and function of the heart and arteries must
appear obscure, or inconsistent or even impossible to him who carefully
considers the entire subject; it will be proper to look more narrowly
into the matter; to contemplate the motion of the heart and arteries,
not only in man, but in all animals that have hearts; and further, by
frequent appeals to vivisection, and constant ocular inspection, to
investigate and endeavour to find the truth.
CHAPTER I.
THE AUTHOR’S MOTIVES FOR WRITING.
When I first gave my mind to vivisections, as a means of discovering the
motions and uses of the heart, and sought to discover these from actual
inspection, and not from the writings of others, I found the task so
truly arduous, so full of difficulties, that I was almost tempted to
think, with Fracastorius, that the motion of the heart was only to be
comprehended by God. For I could neither rightly perceive at first when
the systole and when the diastole took place, nor when and where
dilatation and contraction occurred, by reason of the rapidity of the
motion, which in many animals is accomplished in the twinkling of an
eye, coming and going like a flash of lightning; so that the systole
presented itself to me now from this point, now from that; the diastole
the same; and then everything was reversed, the motions occurring, as it
seemed, variously and confusedly together. My mind was therefore greatly
unsettled, nor did I know what I should myself conclude, nor what
believe from others; I was not surprised that Andreas Laurentius should
have said that the motion of the heart was as perplexing as the flux and
reflux of Euripus had appeared to Aristotle.
At length, and by using greater and daily diligence, having frequent
recourse to vivisections, employing a variety of animals for the
purpose, and collating numerous observations, I thought that I had
attained to the truth, that I should extricate myself and escape from
this labyrinth, and that I had discovered what I so much desired, both
the motion and the use of the heart and arteries; since which time I
have not hesitated to expose my views upon these subjects, not only in
private to my friends, but also in public, in my anatomical lectures,
after the manner of the Academy of old.
These views, as usual, pleased some more, others less; some chid and
calumniated me, and laid it to me as a crime that I had dared to depart
from the precepts and opinion of all anatomists; others desired further
explanations of the novelties, which they said were both worthy of
consideration, and might perchance be found of signal use. At length,
yielding to the requests of my friends, that all might be made
participators in my labours, and partly moved by the envy of others,
who, receiving my views with uncandid minds and understanding them
indifferently, have essayed to traduce me publicly, I have been moved to
commit these things to the press, in order that all may be enabled to
form an opinion both of me and my labours. This step I take all the more
willingly, seeing that Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, although he
has accurately and learnedly delineated almost every one of the several
parts of animals in a special work, has left the heart alone untouched.
Finally, if any use or benefit to this department of the republic of
letters should accrue from my labours, it will, perhaps, be allowed that
I have not lived idly, and, as the old man in the comedy says:
For never yet hath any one attained
To such perfection, but that time, and place,
And use, have brought addition to his knowledge;
Or made correction, or admonished him,
That he was ignorant of much which he
Had thought he knew; or led him to reject
What he had once esteemed of highest price.
So will it, perchance, be found with reference to the heart at this
time; or others, at least, starting from hence, the way pointed out to
them, advancing under the guidance of a happier genius, may make
occasion to proceed more fortunately, and to inquire more accurately.