Philip Henry Pye-Smith

“ The great anatomist Fabricius, Harvey’s teacher at Padua, described the valves of the veins more perfectly than had Sylvius. Carlo Ruini, in his treatise on the Anatomy and Diseases of the Horse (1590) , taught that the left ventricle sends blood and vital spirits to all parts of the body except the lungs—the ordinary Galenical doctrine. Yet on the strength of this phrase Professor J. B. Ercolani actually put up a tablet in the veterinary school at Bologna to Ruini as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood! ”

“ The fact that an inscription has been placed on the bust of Caesalpinus at Rome, which states that he preceded others in recognizing and demonstrating “the general circulation of the blood,” is only a proof of the blindness of misplaced national vanity. ”

“ The transference of the spiritus naturalis to the lungs, and its return to the left ventricle as spiritus vitalis, was the function which he regarded as important. Indeed a true conception of the lesser circulation as a transference of the whole blood of the right side to the left was impossible until the corresponding transference in the greater or systematic circulation was discovered. Servetus, however, was the true predecessor of Harvey in physiology, and his claims to that honour are perfectly authentic and universally admitted. ”

“ He particularly describes his observations and experiments on the ventricles, the auricles, the arteries and the veins. He shows how the arrangement of the vessels in the foetus supports his theory. He adduces facts observed in disease as well as in health to prove the rapidity of the circulation. He explains how the mechanism of the valves in the veins is adapted, not, as Fabricius believed, to moderate the flow of blood from the heart, but to favour its flow to the heart. He estimates the capacity of each ventricle, and reckons the rate at which the whole mass of blood passes through it. ”

“ Galen taught almost as erroneously that each parent contributes seeds, the union of which produced the young animal. Harvey, after speaking with due honour of Aristotle and Fabricius, begins rightly “ab ovo”; for, as he remarks, “eggs cost little and are always and everywhere to be had,” and moreover “almost all animals, even those which bring forth their young alive, and man himself, are produced from eggs” (“omnia omnino animalia, etiam vivipara, atque hominem adeo ipsum, ex ovo progigni”) . ”

“ Harvey’s Work on the Circulation.—In estimating the character and value of the discovery announced in the Exercitatio de motu cordis et sanguinis, it is necessary to bear in mind the previous state of knowledge on the subject. Aristotle taught that in man and the higher animals the blood was elaborated from the food in the liver, thence carried to the heart, and sent by it through the veins over the body. ”

“ He also took notes of the anatomy of disease; these unfortunately perished with his other manuscripts. Otherwise we might regard him as a forerunner of G. B. Morgagni; for Harvey saw that pathology is but a branch of physiology, and like it must depend first on accurate anatomy. He speaks strongly to this purpose in his first epistle to Riolan: “Sicut enim sanorum et boni habitus corporum dissectio plurimum ad philosophiam et rectam physiologiam facit, ita corporum morbosorum et cachecticorum inspectio potissimum ad pathologiam philosophicam.” ”

“ Meanwhile a greater convert, R. Descartes, in his Discours sur la méthode (1637) had announced his adhesion to the new doctrine, and refers to “the English physician to whom belongs the honour of having first shown that the course of the blood in the body is nothing less than a kind of perpetual movement in a circle.” J. Walaeus of Leyden, H. Regius of Utrecht and Schlegel of Hamburg successively adopted the new physiology. ”

“ He elaborately and clearly demonstrates the effect of obstruction of the blood-stream in arteries or in veins, by the forceps in the case of a snake, by a ligature on the arm of a man, and illustrates his argument by figures. ”

“ And the field was almost untrodden since the days of Aristotle. Fabricius, Harvey’s master, in his work De formatione ovi et pulli (1621) , had alone preceded him in modern times. Moreover, the seventy-two chapters which form the book lack the co-ordination so conspicuous in the earlier treatise, and some of them seem almost like detached chapters of a system which was never completed or finally revised.
Aristotle had believed that the male parent furnished the body of the future embryo, while the female only nourished and formed the seed ”

“ Chapters xlvi.-l. are devoted to the abstruse question of the efficient cause of generation, which, after much discussion of the opinions of Aristotle and of Sennertius, Harvey refers to the action of both parents as the efficient instruments of the first great cause. [4] He then goes on to describe the order in which the several parts appear in the chick. ”

“ Aubrey tells us that “he paid his visits on horseback with a foot-cloth, his man following on foot, as the fashion then was.” He adds—“Though all of his profession would allow him to be an excellent anatomist, I never heard any that admired his therapeutic way. ”

“ To this loss Cowley refers— ↑ Indeed the same word, περίοδος αἵματος, occurs in the Hippocratic writings, and was held by Van der Linden to prove that to the father of medicine himself, and not to Columbus or Caesalpinus, belonged the laurels of Harvey. ↑ Realdo Columbus (De re anatomica, 1559) formally denies the muscularity of the heart, yet correctly teaches that blood and spirits pass from the right to the left ventricle, not through the septum but through the lungs, “quod nemo hactenus aut animadvertit aut scriptum reliquit.” ”