Edmund Alexander Parkes

“ It may be said that a mind of this kind, the main character of which is a habit of diligent observation of Nature, presents nothing unusual, that all men have it more or less, and that we cannot make this habit or power a means of classification, or partition out an order of minds by what is a common possession of all minds. My contention is, however, that some minds possess this power and intentness of observation in quite an extraordinary degree, so that it really does separate them from other men. ”

“ The discovery can no more be overlooked or passed by in physiology, than the movements of the world round our sun, and of our sun round some great centre, could be overlooked in the investigations of astronomy. We may then, I think, confidently assert that this discovery is what we call an immortal one—that is, that it is too great and too momentous to permit men to let the name of the discoverer fade from their minds. ”

“ Guy, that Boyle’s story of Harvey being led to his discovery by considering the action of the venous valves, is incorrect; that would have been merely a lucky guess from one fact, not an induction from a great many. His next proceeding is most characteristic of Harvey’s character of mind. To most of us, I think, if the movement of the blood in a circle from arteries to veins had occurred, the conclusion would at once be that it so completely accorded with all facts that it must be so. We should be tempted to call out “Eureka” like the sage of old. ”

“ A parallel case may be found in music. All men have some musical power, but every now and then a man is born with such an extraordinary genius that he is quite lifted out of the crowd of common musicians. ”

“ Here, again, it is power possessed by all men, but in them carried to an extreme. When, as in Newton, this observing or experimental power is combined with mathematical insight, we get a philosopher of the highest class, who writes his name indelibly on the record of Science.
Now, I claim for Harvey a position among the men exceptionally gifted with these powers of observation. There is in his works on Circulation and on Generation quite sufficient proof of this, and I shall give some evidence as I proceed. Men possessed of this power seem to be unable to avoid exercising it. ”

“ And this disposition must have commenced extremely early, for he had made all his numerous experiments on the circulation before he was thirty-seven, and must have lasted to extreme old age, for he was still observing the movements of the stars or the growth of plants up to the time of death, when he was nearly eighty years of age. A usual peculiarity of this class of mind is the great ingenuity and imagination men show in arranging their experiments and in devising new ones. Every one must have admired the ingenious mechanism by which physical hypotheses are tested or proved ”

“ Let any one call up to his memory men whom he knows, and who are the acknowledged masters in Botany, or Zoology, or Chemistry, and I think he will admit that these have quite unusual powers of close observation and appreciation of natural phenomena. ”

“ Men of great mathematical insight must be called preeminently scientific; but the scientific mind to which I refer is not mathematical in the highest sense of the word. Harvey was one of those men who are urged on to submit everything to experiment and observation. ”

“ Harvey himself states quite candidly and truthfully how opinions stood before he published in this College his evidence on the motion of the blood. Men for years had perplexed themselves about this problem. Now one guess, now another, may have hovered for a moment near the truth; but, as Dr. Rolleston has so well shown in a former Harveian oration, there cannot be for a moment a doubt of the entire originality of Harvey. ”

“ We must remember that there were no microscopes to demonstrate the channel of communication between arteries and veins; and of course he had no true conception of the immense capillary system. Then, even with a mind of such a class, it is impossible to put aside the influence of previous teaching. The power of the general opinion must impress every man, and lead him to see difficulties which are perhaps unreal. Harvey had very soon dismissed the absurd notion that there were invisible pores in the septum of the heart ”

“ Some few names in literature, some few in philosophy, and some among those who have founded or destroyed empires, have echoed down the stream of time for a thousand or may be two or three thousand years, and have thus secured what we call immortality. ”

“ Now Harvey omits nothing; he commences with the most obvious, and proceeds step by step; nothing is blurred; nothing is left ill-defined. His work was composed before the Novum Organon was published, but it has been well said by Willis that it might have been planned on the model of that system. ”

“ And in his introduction to his work on Generation, where he has a chapter on the “Manner and Order of acquiring Knowledge,” he says, among other sentences to the same purport, that “all true science rests upon those principles which have their origin in the operation of the senses; and that no one can truly be entitled discreet or well-informed who does not, of his own experience, from repeated memory, frequent perception by sense, and diligent observation, know that a thing is so in fact.” And in another place he says, “Nature is herself to be addressed ”

“ Many observers have a great mistrust of the facts they have themselves discovered. They are biased by previous theories, they do not see how their new facts fit in, they think there is some mistake, or they do not really fully see what they have seen. ”

“ Then, counting the pulse, he shows that in half an hour far more blood must pass through the heart than all the blood in the body. In the case of the sheep he says that if only one scruple passes at each contraction, in one half hour 3⁄4 lb. ”

“ Beethoven deaf, yet knowing how to harmonize and combine the notes of diverse instruments not one of which he could hear. All these and many others are examples that an universal faculty may rise into a region which seems above common humanity. ”

“ At length, all was clear about the heart, and he had, in addition, carefully determined the total quantity of blood in the body of animals. He had also found our the action of the cardiac valves, and was acquainted with the valves in the veins ”

“ He nowhere gives a complete list of the animals he employs. He mentions, as it were incidentally, dogs, hogs, sheep, birds, fish, eels, snakes, lizards, toads, frogs, crabs, shrimps, snails, shell-fish, bees, wasps, hornets, flies. ”