William Harvey

“ A superior and more divine agent than man, therefore, appears to engender and preserve mankind, a higher power than the male bird to produce a young one from the egg. We acknowledge God, the supreme and omnipotent creator, to be present in the production of all animals, and to point, as it were, with a finger to his existence in his works, the parents being in every case but as instruments in his hands. In the generation of the pullet from the egg all things are indeed contrived and ordered with singular providence, divine wisdom, and most admirable and incomprehensible skill. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is in this interval that the transition is made in the egg from the life of the plant to the life of the animal. For now the margin of the diffluent fluid looks red, and is purpurescent with a sanguineous line, and nearly in its centre there appears a leaping point, of the colour of blood, so small that at one moment, when it contracts, it almost entirely escapes the eye, and again, when it dilates, it shows like the smallest spark of fire. Such at the outset is animal life, which the plastic force of nature puts in motion from the most insignificant beginnings! ”

“ Whence the stomach at length failing, and the excretions long retained, the work of concoction proceeding languidly, the liver getting loaded, the blood stagnating in the veins, the spirits frozen, the heart, the source of life, oppressed, the lungs infarcted, and made impervious to the ambient air, the general habit rendered more compact, so that it could no longer exhale or perspire—no wonder that the soul, little content with such a prison, took its flight. ”

“ We frequently see how the extremities are chilled by the external cold, how the nose and cheeks and hands look blue, and how the blood, stagnating in them as in the pendent or lower parts of a corpse, becomes of a dusky hue; the limbs at the same time getting torpid, so that they can scarcely be moved, and seem almost to have lost their vitality. Now they can by no means be so effectually, and especially so speedily restored to heat and colour and life, as by a new afflux and appulsion of heat from its source. But how can parts attract in which the heat and life are almost extinct? ”

“ This view of Fabricius is therefore both imperfect and incorrect; inasmuch as he does not think of what nature performs in fact in the work of generation, so much as of what in his opinion she ought to do, betrayed into this by his comparison with the edifice reared by art. As if nature had imitated art, and not rather art nature!—mindful of which he himself says afterwards: [288] “It were better to say that art learned of nature, and was an imitator of her doings; for, as Galen everywhere reminds us, nature is both older and displays greater wisdom in her works than art.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is as if the summer in England sufficed for the production of the fruit only, as the hen for the production of the egg, but like the female fowl was impotent as a pro-genetrix; whilst in other countries enjoying the sun’s light in larger proportion, the summer acquired the characters of the male, and perfected the work of generation. ”

“ In anger the eyes are fiery and the pupils contracted; in modesty the cheeks are suffused with blushes; in fear, and under a sense of infamy and of shame, the face is pale, but the ears burn as if for the evil they heard or were to hear; in lust how quickly is the member distended with blood and erected! But, above all, and this is of the highest interest to the medical practitioner,—how speedily is pain relieved or removed by the detraction of blood, the application of cupping-glasses, or the compression of the artery which leads to a part? ”

“ Nor should we so much wonder what it is in the cock that preserves and governs so perfect and beautiful an animal, and is the first cause of that entity which we call the soul; but much more, what it is in the egg, aye, in the germ of the egg, of so great virtue as to produce such an animal, and raise him to the very summit of excellence. ”

“ Why does not the arteria venosa pulsate, seeing that it is numbered among the arteries? Or wherefore is there a pulse in the vena arteriosa? Because the pulse of the arteries is derived from the impulse of the blood. Why does an artery differ so much from a vein in the thickness and strength of its coats? Because it sustains the shock of the impelling heart and streaming blood. Hence, as perfect nature does nothing in vain, and suffices under all circumstances, we find that the nearer the arteries are to the heart, the more do they differ from the veins in structure ”

“ The egg, consequently, is formed by the hen, but it is made prolific by the cock.
Aristotle adds in the same place: “There is a distinction of sexes through the whole class of birds. And therefore it happens that the hen perfects her egg, not yet influenced by the intercourse of the male, in so far as it is a plant; but as it is not a plant, there she does not perfect it: nor does anything come of it which engenders. For neither has it arisen simply, like the seed of a plant, nor like an animal conception, by intercourse.” ”

“ How long a time is needed for conception to be carried out to parturition! with what labour and tenderness is an infant reared! to what diligent and continued nutrition must the body be subject, to arrive at adolescence! but by what a nothing is it destroyed! It takes an age to establish cities, an hour to destroy them. By great watching are all things established and made to flourish, quickly and of a sudden do they fall in pieces. ”

“ The egg is the terminus from which all fowls, male and female, have sprung, and to which all their lives tend,—it is the result which nature has proposed to herself in their being. And thus it comes that individuals in procreating their like for the sake of their species, endure for ever. The egg, I say, is a period or portion of this eternity; for it were hard to say whether an egg exists for the sake of the chick that it engenders, or the pullet exists for the sake of the egg which it is to engender. ”

“ We are, I say, to strive after personal experience, not to rely on the experience of others; without which, indeed, no one can properly become a student of any branch of natural science, nor show himself a competent judge of what I am about to say on the subject of generation; for without experience and skill in anatomy, he would not better understand me than could one born blind appreciate the nature and difference of colours, or one deaf from birth judge of sounds. I would, therefore, have you, gentle reader, to take nothing on trust from me concerning the generation of animals ”

“ In such an egg, I ask, is it the vital principle of the father or that of the mother, which inheres? or is it a mixture of the two? But how can vital principles be mingled, if the vital principle (as form) be act and substance, which it is, according to Aristotle? For no one will deny, whatever it be ultimately which in the fruitful egg is the beginning and cause of the effects we witness, that it is a substance susceptible of divers powers, forces, or faculties, and even conditions,—virtues, vices, health and sickness. For some eggs are esteemed to be longer, others shorter lived ”

“ Which and what principle is it whence motion and generation proceed? By what virtue does the semen act, according to Aristotle? What is it that renders the semen itself fruitful? (for the philosopher will have it that nature in all natural bodies is the innate principle of motion and of rest, and not any second accident.) Whether is that which in the egg is cause, artificer, and principle of generation and of all the vital and vegetative operations—conservation, nutrition, growth—innate or superadded? ”

“ From this it clearly appears that the blood is the generative part, the fountain of life, the first to live, the last to die, and the primary seat of the soul; the element in which, as in a fountain head, the heat first and most abounds and flourishes; from whose influxive heat all the other parts of the body are cherished, and obtain their life; for the heat, the companion of the blood, flows through and cherishes and preserves the whole body, as I formerly demonstrated in my work on the motion of the blood. ”

“ But of this matter we shall speak more fully, when we come to treat of the soul or living principle of the embryo in general, and of the excellence and divine nature of the vegetative soul from a survey of its operations, all of which are carried on with such foresight, art, and divine intelligence; which, indeed, surpass our powers of understanding not less than Deity surpasses man, and are allowed, by common consent, to be so wonderful that their ineffable lustre is in no way to be penetrated by the dull edge of our apprehension. ”

“ In so far as it is spirit, it is the hearth, the Vesta, the household divinity, the innate heat, the sun of the microcosm, the fire of Plato; not because like common fire it lightens, burns, and destroys, but because by a vague and incessant motion it preserves, nourishes, and aggrandizes itself. It farther deserves the name of spirit, inasmuch as it is radical moisture, at once the ultimate and the proximate and the primary aliment, more abundant than all the other parts ”

“ I have myself at times seen male fishes in shoals following a female that was on the point of spawning, in the same way as dogs pursue a bitch, that they might sprinkle the ova just laid with their milk or seed. But this is particularly to be remarked in the more wanton and lascivious females, who stir up the dormant fires of Cupid, and inspire a silent love; hence it is that the common cock, so soon as he sees one of his own hens that has been absent for ever so short time, or any other stranger-hen, forthwith feels the sting of desire, and treads her. ”

“ Nor are we only to admire the greatness of the artificer that aids in the production of so noble a work, but chiefly the “contagion” of intercourse, an act which is so momentary! What is it, for instance, that passes from the male into the female, from the female into the egg, from the egg into the chick? What is this transitory thing, which is neither to be found remaining, nor touching, nor contained, as far as the senses inform us, and yet works with the highest intelligence and foresight, beyond all art ”