The Works of William Harvey M.D. William Harvey
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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