The Works of William Harvey M.D. William Harvey
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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