HARVEY, WILLIAM
(1578-1657), English physician, the discoverer
of the circulation of the blood, was the eldest son of Thomas Harvey, a
prosperous Kentish yeofnan, and was born at Folkestone on the 1st of April
1578. After passing through the grammar school of
Canterbury, on the 31st of May 1593, having just entered his sixteenth year, he
became a pensioner of Cams College, Cambridge, at nineteen he took his B.A.
degree, and soon after, having chosen the profession of medicine, he went to
study at Padua under H. Fabricius and Julius Casserius. At the age of
twenty-four Harvey became doctor of medicine, in April 1602. Returning to
England in the first year of James I., he settled in London; and two years
later he married the daughter of Dr Lancelot Browne, who had
been physician to Queen Elizabeth. In the same year he became a candidate of
the Royal College of Physicians, and was duly admitted a fellow (June 1607). In
1609 he obtained the reversion of the post of physician to St Bartholomews
hospital. His application was supported by the king himself and by Dr Henry
Atkins (1558-1635), the president of the college, and on the death of Dr
Wilkinson in the course of the same year he succeeded to the post. He was
thrice censor of the college, and in 1615 was appointed Lumleian lecturer.
In 1616 he began his
course of lectures, and first brought forward his views upon the movements of
the heart and blood. Meantime his practice increased, and he had the lord
chancellor, Francis Bacon, and the earl of Arundel among his patients. In 1618
he was appointed physician extraordinary to James I., and on the next vacancy
physician in ordinary to his successor. In 1628, the year of the publication of
the Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sasi guinis, he was elected treasurer
of the College of Physicians, but at the end of the following year he resigned
the office, in order, by command of Charles I., to accompany the young duke of
Lennox (James Stuart, afterwards duke of Richmond) on his travels. He appears
to have visited Italy, and returned in 1632. Four
years later he accompanied the earl of Arundel on his embassy co tne emperor
Ferdinand II. He was eager in collecting objects of natural history, sometimes
causing the earl anxiety for his safety by his excursions in a country infested
by robbers in consequence of the Thirty Years
War. In a letter written on this journey, he says: By the way we could scarce
see a dogg, crow, kite, raven, or any bird, or anything to anatomise; only sum
few miserable people, the reliques of the war and the plague, whom famine had
made anatomies before I came. Having returned to his practice in London at the
close of the year 1636, he accompanied Charles I. in one of his journeys to
Scotland (1639 or 1641). While at Edinburgh he visited the Bass Rock; he
minutely describes its abundant population of sea-fowl in his treatise Dc
generatione, and incidentally speaks of the account then credited of the solan
goose growing on trees as a fable. He was in attendance on the king at the
battle of Edgehill (October 1642), where he withdrew under a hedge with the
prince of Wales and the duke of York (then boys of twelve and ten years old),
and took out of his pocket a book and read. But he had not-read very long
before a bullet of a great gun grazed on the ground near him, which made him
remove his station, as he afterwards told John Aubrey. After the indecisive
battle, Harvey followed CharlesI. to Oxford, where, writes the same gossiping
narrator, I first saw him, but was then too young to be acquainted with so
great a doctor. I remember he came several times to our college (Trinity) to
George Bathurst, B.D. who had a hen to hatch eggs in his chamber, which they
opened daily to see the progress and way of generation. In Oxford he remained
three years, and there was some chance of his being superseded in his office at
St Bartholomews hospital, because he hath withdrawn himself from his charge,
and is retired to the party in arms against the Parliament. It was no doubt at
this time that his lodgings at Whitehall were searched, and not only the furniture seized but also invaluable
manuscripts and anatomical preparations.i While with the king at Oxford he was
made warden of Merton College, but a year later, in 1646, that city surrendered
to Fairfax, and Harvey returned to London. He was now sixty-eight years old,
and, having resigned his appointments and relinquished the cares of practice,
lived in learned retirement with one or other of his brothers. It was in his
brother Daniels house at Combe that Dr (afterwards Sir George) Ent, a faithful
friend and disciple (1604-1689), visited him in 1650. I found him, he says.
with a cheeerful and sprightly countenance investigating, like Democritus, the
nature of things. Asking if all were well with himHow can that be, he replied,
when the state is so agitated with
storms and I myself am yet in the open sea? And indeed, were not my mind
solaced by my studies and the recollection of the observations I have formerly
made, there is nothing which should make me desirous of a longer continuance.
But thus employed, this obscure life and
vacation from public cares which would disgust other minds is the medicine of
mine. The work on which he had been chiefly engaged at Oxford, and indeed since
the publication of his treatise on the circulation in 1628, was an
investigation into the recondite but deeply interesting subject of generation.
Charles I. had been an enlightened patron of Harveys studies, had put the royal
deer parks at Windsor and Hampton Court at his disposal, and had watched his
demonstration of the growth of the chick with no less interest than the
movements of the living heart. Harvey had now collected a large number of
observations, though he would probably have delayed their publication. But Ent
succeeded in obtaining the manuscripts, with authority to print them or not as
he should find them. I went from him, he says, like another Jason in possession
of the golden fleece, and when levem gemitum effudero. Doloris mihi haec causa
est: cum, inter nuperos nostros tumultus et bella plusquam civilia, serenissimum regem (idque non solum senatus permissione
sed et jussu) sequor, rapaces quaedam manus non modo aedium mearum
supellectilem omnem expilarunt, sed etiam, quae mihi causa gravior querimoniae,
adversaria mea, multorum annorum laboribus parta, e museo meo sumnioverunt. Quo
factum est ut observationes plurimae, pracsertins de gencratione insectorum,
cum repuhlicae literariae (ausim dicere) detrimento, perierint.De gen., Ex.
lxviii. To this loss Cow!ey refers0 cursed war! who can forgive thee this?
Houses and towns may rise
again, And ten times easier tis To rebuild Pauls than any work of his.
I came home and perused
the pieces singly, I was amazed that so vast a treasure should have been so
long hidden. The result was the publication of the Exercitationes de
generatione (1651).
This was the last of
Harveys labors. He had now reached his seventy-third year. His theory of the
circulation had been opposed and defended, and was now generally accepted by
the most eminent anatomists both in his own country and abroad. He was known
and honored throughout Europe, and his own college (Caius) voted a statue in
his honor (1652) viro monumentis suis immortali. In 1654 he was elected to the
highest post in his profession, that of president of the college; but the
following day he met the assembled fellows, and, declining the honor for
himself on account of the infirmities of age, recommended the re-election of
the late president Dr Francis Prujean (159,3 1666). He accepted, however, the
office of consiliarius, which he again held in the two following years. He had
already enriched the college with other gifts besides the honor of his name. He
had raised for them a noble building of Roman architecture (rustic work with
Corinthian pilasters), comprising a great parlouror conversationroom below and alibrary above; he had furnished the library with books,
and filled the museum with simples and rarities, as well as with specimens of
instruments used in the surgical and obstetric branches of medicine. At last he
determined to give to his beloved college his paternal estate at Burmarsh in
Kent. His wife had died some years before, his brothers were wealthy men, and
he was childless, so that he was defrauding no heir when, in July 1656, he made
the transfer of this property, then valued at 56 per annum, with provision for
a salary to the college librarian and for the endowment of an annual oration,
which is still given on the anniversary of the day. The orator, so Harvey
orders in his deed of gift, is to exhort the fellows of the college to search
out and study the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and also for the
honor of the profession to continue mutual love and affection among themselves.
Harvey, like his
contemporary and great successor Thomas Sydenham, was long afflicted with gout,
but he preserved his activity of mind to an advanced age. In. his eightieth
year, on the 3rd of June 1657, he was attacked by paralysis, and though
deprived of speech was able to send for his
nephews and distribute his watch, ring, and other personal trinkets among them.
He died the same evening, the palsy giving him an easy passport, and was buried
with great honor in his brother Eliabs vault at Hempstead in Essex, annorum
etfamae satur. In 1883 the lead coffin containing his remains was enclosed in a
marble sarcophagus and moved to the Harvey chapel within the church.
John Aubrey, to whom we
owe most of the minor particulars about Harvey which have been preserved, says:
In person he was not tall, but of the lowest stature; round faced, olivaster
complexion, little eyes, round, very black, full of spirits; his hair black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died.
The best portrait of him extant is by Cornelius Jansen in the library of the
College of Physicians, one of those rescued from the great fire, which
destroyed their original hall in 1666. It has been often
engraved, and is prefixed to the fine edition of his works published in 1766.
Harveys 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 throughthe veins over the body. His
successors of the Alexandrian school of medicine, Erasistratus and Herophilus,
further elaborated his system, and taught that, while the veins carried blood
from the heart to the members, the arteries carried a subtle kind of air or
spirit. For the practical physician only two changes had been made in this
theory of the circulation between the Christian era and the 16th century. Galen
had discovered that the arteries were not, as their name implies, merely
air-pipes, but that they contained blood as well as vital air or spirit. And it
had been gradually ascertained that the nerves (z-Dpa) which arose from the
brain and conveyed animal spirits to the body were different from the tendons
or sinews (vi3pa) which attach muscles to bones. First, then, the physicians of
the time of Thomas Linacre knew that the blood is not stagnant in the body. So
did Shakespeare and Homer, and every augur who inspected the entrails of a
victim, and every village barber who breathed a vein. Plato even uses the
expression i-ui alua ,~~ar ii-dpi-cI i-cl uuxii /o,5p&~c irepc~pii0cu. But
no one had a conception of a continuous stream returning to its source (a
circulation in the true sense of the word) either in the system or in the
lungs. If they used the word circulatio, as did Caesalpinus,i it was as vaguely
as the French policeman cries Circulex. The movements of the blood were in fact
thought to be slow and irregular in direction as well as in speed, like the
circulation of air in a house, or the circulation of a crowd in the streets of
a city. Secondly, they supposed that one kind of blood flowed from the liver to
the right ventricle of the heart, and thence to the lungs and the general
system by the veins, and that another kind flowed from the left ventricle to
the lungs and general system by the arteries. Thirdly, they supposed that the
septum of the heart was pervious and allowed blood
to pass directly from the right to the left side. Fourthly, they had no
conception of the functions of the heart as the motor power of the movement of
the blood. They doubted whether its substance was muscular; they supposed its
pulsation to be due to expansion of the spirits it contained; they believed the
only dynamic effect which it had on the blood to be sucking it in during its
active diastole, and they supposed the chief use of its constant movements to
be the due mixture of blood and spirits.
Of the great anatomists of
the 16th century, Sylvius (In Hipp. et Gal. ~/iys. paTtern anatom. isagoge)
described the valves of the veins; Vesalius (Dc humani corporis fabrica, 1542)
ascertained that the septum between the right and left ventricles is complete,
though he could not bring himself to deny the invisible pores which Galens
system demanded. Servetus, in his Chrislianismi restjjzItjo (1553), goes
somewhat farther than his fellowstudent Vesalius, and says: Panes ille medius
non est aptus ad communicationem Ct elaborationem 111am; licet aliquid resudare
possit; and, from this anatomical fact and the large size of the pulmonary
arteries he concludes that there is a communication in the lungs by which blood
passes from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein: Eodem artificio quo in
hepate fit transfusio a vena porta ad venam cavam propter sanguinem, fit etiam
in pulmone transfusio a vena arteriosa ad arteriam venosam propter spiritum.
The natural spirit of the left side and the vital spirit of the right side of
the heart were therefore, he concluded, practically the same, and hence two
instead of three distinct spiritus should be admitted. It seems doubtful
whether even Servetus rightly conceivedof the entire mass of the blood passing
through the pulmonary artery and the lungs. The transference of the spirit us
hat uralis to the lungs, and its return to the left ventricle as spirit us
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. Servettis, however,
was the true predecessor of Harvey in physiology, and his claims to that
honotir are perfectly authentic and universally admitted.2
1
Indeed the same word, 1r~pio&of a4ia.roc, occurs in the Hippocratic
writings, and was held by Van der Linden to prove that to lhe father of
medicine himself, and not to Columbus or Caesalpinus, belonged the laurels of
l-Iarvey.
2
Realdo Columbus (Dc 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 ant scriptum i-eliquit The fact that Harvey quotes
Columbus and not Servetus is explained by the almost entire destruction of the
writings of the latter, which are now among the rarest curiosities. The great
anatomist Fa bricius, Harveys 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 lloree (1590),
tatight that the left ventricle sends blood and vital spirits to all parts of
the body except the lungsthe ordinary Galenical doctrine. Yet on the The way
then to Harveys great work had been paved by th discovery of the valves in the
veins, and by that of the lesse~ circulationthe former due to Sylvius and
Fabricius, the latte:
to Servetusbut the
significance of the valves was unsuspected and the fact of even the pulmonary
circulation was not generall) admitted in its full meaning.
In his treatise IIarvey
proves (I) that it is the contraction, riot the dilatation, of the heart which
coincides with the pulse, and that the ventricles as true muscular sacs squeeze
the blood which they contain into the aorta and pulmonary artery; (2) that the
pulse is not produced by the arteries enlarging and so filling, but by the
arteries being filled with blood and so enlarging; (3) that there are no pores
in the septum of the heart, so that the whole blood in the right ventricle is
sent to the lungs and round by the pulmonary veins to the left ventricle, and
also that the whole blood in the left ventricle is again sent into the
arteries, round by the smaller veins into the venae cavac, and by them to the
right ventricle againthus making a complete circulation ; (~) that the blood in
the arteries and that in the veins is the same blood; (5) that the action of
the right and left sides of the heart, auricles, ventricles and valves, is the
same, the mechanism in both being for reception and propulsion of liquid and
not of air, since the blood on the right side, though mixed with air, is still
blood; (6) that the blood sent through tI)e arteries to the tissues is not all
used, but that most of it runs through into the veins; (7) that there is no to
and fro undulation in the veins, but a constant stream from the distant parts
towards the heart; (8) that the dynamical starting-point of the blood is the
heart and not the liver.
The method by which Harvey
arrived at his complete and almost faultless solution of the most fundamental
aPd difficult problem in physiology has been often discussed, and is well
worthy of attention. He begins his treatise by pointing out the many
inconsistencies and defects in the Galenical theory, quoting the writings of
Galen himself, of Fabricius, Columbus and others, with great respect, but with
unflinching criticism. For, in his own noble language, wise men must learn anatomy,
not from the decrees of philosophers, but from the fabric of flature herself,
nec ita in verba jurare antiquitatis magistrae, ut veritatem amicaln in apertis
relinquant, et in conspectu omnium deserant. He had, as we know, not only
furnished himself with all the knowledge that books and the instructions of the
best anatomists of Italy could give, but, by a long series of dissections, had
gained a far more complete knowledge of the comparative anatomy of the heart
and vessels than any contemporarywe may almost say than any successoruntil the
times of John Hunter and J. F. Meckel. Thus equipped, he tells us that he began
his investigations into the movements of the heart and blood by looking at
themi.e. by seeing their action in living animals. After a modest preface, he
heads his first chapter 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 claims of Caesalpinus, a more
plausible claimant to Harveys laurels, are scarcely better founded. In his
Quaestiones peripateticae (1571) he followed Servetus and Columbus in
describing what we now know as the pulmonary circulation under that name, and
this is the only foundation for the assertion (first made in Bayles dictionary)
that Caesalpinus knew the circulation of the blood. He is even behind Servetus,
for he only allows part of the blood of the right ventricle to go round by this
circuit ; some, he conceives, passes through the hypothetical pores in the
septum, and the rest by the superior cava to the head and arms, by the inferior
to the rest of the body: Hanc esse venarum utilitatem ut omnes partes corporis
sanguinem pro nutrimento deferant. Ex dextro ventr cordis vena eava sanguinem
crassiorem, in quo calor intensus est magis, cx altero
autem ventr, sanguinem temperatissimum ac sincerissimum habente, egreditur
aorta. Caesalpinus seems to have had no original views on the subject; all that
he writes is copied from Galen or from Servetus except sonic erroneous
observations Of his own. I-Its greatest merit was as a botanist; and no claim
to the discovery of the circulation was made by him or by his conteniporartes.
When it was made, Hailer decided conclusively against it. The fact that an inscription
has been placed on the bust of Caesaiptnus 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.
Ex vivorum dissectione, qualis
sit cordis motus He minutely describes what he saw and handled in dogs, pigs,
serpents, frogs and fishes, and even in slugs, oysters, lobsters and insects,
in the transparent minima squilla, quae Anglice dicitur a shrimp, and lastly in the chick while still in the shell. In these
investigations he used a perspicillum or simple lens. 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 favor 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. He elaborately and clearly demonstrates the effect of
obstruction of the blood-stream in arteries orin 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. He then sums up his conclusion thus: Circulari quodam
motu, in circuitu, agitari in animalibus sanguinem, et esse in perpetuo motu;
Ct hanc esse actionem sive functionem cordis quam pulsu peragit; et omnino
motus et pulsus cordis causam unam esse. Lastly, in the 15th, ith and 17th
chapters, he adds certain confirmatory evidence, as the effect of position on
the circulation, the absorption of animal poisons and of medicines applied
externally, the muscular structure of the heart and the necessary working of
its valves. The whole treatise, which occupies only 67 pages of large print in
the quarto edition of 1766, is a model of accurate observation, patient
accumulation of facts, ingenious experimentation, bold yet cautious hypothesis
and logical deduction.
In one point only was the
demonstration of the circulation incomplete. Harvey could not discover the
capillary channels by which the blood passes from the arteries to the veins.
This gap in the circulation was supplied several years later by the great
anatomist Marcello Malpighi, who in 1661 saw in the lungs of a frog, by the
newly invented microscope, how the blood passes from the one set of vessels to
the other. Harvey saw all that could be seen by the unaided eye in his
observations on living animals; Malpighi, four years after Harveys death, by
another observation on a living animal, completed the splendid chain of evidence.
If this detracts from Harveys merit it leaves Servetus no merit at all. But in
fact the existence of the channels first seen by Malpighi was as clearly
pointed to by Harveys reasoning as the existence of Neptune by the calculations
of Leverrier and of Adams.
Harvey himself and all his
contemporaries were well aware of the novelty and importance of his theory. He
says in the admirable letter to Dr Argent, president of the College of
Physicians, which follows the dedication of his treatise to Charles I., that he should not have ventured to publish a book which alone
asserts that the blood pursues its course and flows back again by a new path,
rontrary to the received doctrine taught so many ages by innumerable learned
and illustrious men, if he had not set forth his theory for more than nine
years in his college lectures, gradually brought it to perfection, and
convinced his colleagues by actual demonstrations of the truth of what he
advanced. He anticipates opposition, and even obloquy or loss, from the novelty
of his views. These anticipations, however, the event proved to have been
grotindless. If we are to credit Aubrey indeed, he found that after the
publication of the D~ inotu he fell mightily in his practice; twas believed by
the vulgar that he was crackbrained, and all the physicians were against him.
But the last assertion is demonstrably untrue; and if apothecaries and patients
ever forsook him, they must soon have returned, for Harvey left a handsome
fortune. By his own profession the book was received as it
deserved. So novel a doctrine was not to be accepted without due inquiry, hut
his colleagues had heard his lectures and seen his demonstrations for years;
they were already convinced of the truth of his theory, urged its publication,
continued him in his lectureship, and paid him every honor in their power. In
other countries the book was widely read and much canvassed. Few accepted the
new theory; hut no one dreamt of claiming the honor of it for himself, nor for
several years did any one pretend that it could be fotind in the works of
previotis authors. The first attack on it was a feeble tract by one James
Primerose, a pupil of Jean Riolan (Exerc. et animadv. in libr. Hanei do mo! ii
rord. et song., 1630). Five years later Parisanus, an Italian physician,
published his Lapis Lydius do motu cord.
~t
sang. (Venice, 1635), a still more bulky and futile performance. Primeroses
attacks were imbellia pleraque and sine ictu :hat of Parisanus in quamplurimis
turpius, according to the con:emporary judgment of Johann Vessling. Their
dulness has pro:ected them from further censure. Caspar Hoffmann, professor at
~4uremberg, while admitting the truth of the lesser circulation in :he full
Harveian sense, denied the rest of the new doctrine. To -iim the English
anatomist replied in a short letter, still extant, with great consideration yet
with modest dignity, beseeching him :o convince himself by actual inspection of
the truth of the facts in ~uestiun. I-le concludes: I accept your censtire in
the candid fnd friendly spirit in which you say you wrote it; do you also the
mme to me, now that I have answered you in the same spirit. rhis letter is
dated May 1636, and in that year Harvey passed through Nuremberg with the earl
of Arundel, and visited Hoffmann. But he failed to convince him; nec tanien
valuit Harveius vel oram, writes P. M. Schlegel, who, however, afterwards
succeeded in persuading the obstinate old Galenist to soften his opposition to
the new doctrine, and thinks that his complete conversion might have been
effected if he had but lived a little longer nec dubito quin :oncessisset
tandem in nostra castra. While in Italy the following year Harvey visited his
old university of Padua, and demonstrated his views to Professor Vessling. A
few months later this excellent anatomist wrote him a courteous and sensible
letter, with certain objections to the new theory. The answer to this has not
been preserved, but it convinced his candid opponent, who admitted the truth of
the circulation in a second letter (both were published in 1640), and
afterwards told a friend, Harveium nostrum si
audis, agnosces coelestem sanguinis et spiritus ingressum ex arteriis per venas
in dextrum cordis sintim. Meanwhile a greater convert, R. Descartes, in his
Discours sur la methode (1637) had announced his adhesion to the new doctrine,
and refers to the English physician to whom belongs the honor of having first
shown that the course of the blond 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. Of these
professors, Regius was mauled by the pertinacious Primerose and mauled him in
rettirn (Spongia qua eluuntur sordes quae Jac. Primirosius, &c., and Antidotum
adv. Spongiam venenatam Henr. Regii). Descartes afterwards repeated 1-larveys
vivisections. and, more convinced than ever, demolished Professor V. F.
Plempius of Louvain, who had written on the other side. George Ent also
published an Apologia pro circulatione sanguinis in answer to Parisanus.
At last Jean Riolan
ventured to publish his Enchiridium anatomicum (1648), in which he attacks
Harveys theory, and proposes one of his own. Riolan had accompanied the queen
dowager of France (Maria de Medici) on a visit to her daughter at Whitehall,
and had there met Harvey and discussed his theory. He was, in the opinion of
the judicious Hailer, vir asper et in nuperos suosque coaevos immitis ac nemini
parcens, nimis avidus suarum laudum praeco, et se ipso fatente anatomicorum
princeps. Harvey replied to the Enchiridium with perfectly courteous language
and perfectly conclusive arguments, in two letters Dc circulatione sanguinis,
which were published at Cambridge in 1649, and are still well worth reading. He
speaks here of the circuitus sanguinis a me inventus Riolan was unconvinced,
but lived to see another professor of anatomy appointed in his own university
who taught Harveys doctrines. Even in Italy, Trullius, professor of anatomy at
Rome, expounded the new doctrine in 1651. But the most illustrious converts
were Jean Pecquet of Dieppe, the discoverer of the thoracic duct, and of the
true course of the lacteal vessels, and Thomas Bartholinus of Copenhagen, in
his Amiatome ex omnium veterum recenhiorumque observalionibus, imprimis
snstitutionibus beati mci parentis Gas pan
Bartholini, ad circulationem Harveianam et vasa lymphatica renovata (Leiden,
1651). At last Plempius also retracted all his objections; for, as he candidly
stated, having opened the bodies of a few living dogs, I find that all Harveys
statements are perfectly true. Hobbes of Malmesbury could thus say in the
preface to his Elementa philosophiae that his friend Harvey, solus quod sciam,
doctrinam novani superata invidia vivens stabilivit.
It has been made a
reproach to Harvey that he failed to appreciate the importance of the
discoveries of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels by G. Asehli, J. Pecquet and
C. Bartholinus. In three letters on the subject, one to Dr R. Morison of Paris
(5652) and two to Dr Horst of Darmstadt
(1655), a correspondent of Bartholins, he discusses these observations, and
shows himself unconvinced of their accuracy. He writes, however, with great
moderation and reasonableness, and excuses himself from investigating the subject
further on the score of the infirmities of age; he was then above seventy-four.
The following quotation shows the spirit of these letters: Latido equidem
summopere Pecqueti aliorumque in indaganda veritate industriam singularem, nec
duhito quin multa adhuc in Democriti puteo abscondita sint, a venturi saeculi
indefatigabili diligentia expronienda. Bartholin, though reasonably
disappointed in not having I-Iarveys concurrence, speaks of him with the utmost
respect, and generously says that the glory of discovering the movements of the
heart and of the blood was enough for one man.
tdecl his friend to
publish this book in 1951. It is between ;truse, and in fact inaccessible to
proper investigation without con aid of the microscope. And the field was
almost untrodden of i ce the days of Aristotle. Fabricius, Harveys master, in
his its rk De format-lone ovi et pulli
(I6~I), had alone preceded him modern times. Moreover, the seventy-two chapters
which not rn the book lack the co-ordination so conspicuous in the earlier
atise, and some of them seem almost like detached chapters of ystem which was
never completed or finally revised. wri ~ristotle had believed that the male
parent furnished the body of plc futtire embryo, while the female only
nourished and formed the thc d; this is in fact the theory on which, in the
Eumenides of ~ e schylus, Apollo obtains the acquittal of Orestes. Galen taught
V aost as erroneously that each parent contributes seeds, the union me which
produced the young animal. Harvey, after speaking with p. 1 honor of Aristotle
and Fabricius, begins rightly ab ovo ; nec as he remarks, eggs cost little and
are always and everywhere per be had, and moreover almost all animals, even
thbse which ~. ng forth their young alive, and man himself, are produced from
clil s ( oitinia omnino animalia, etiarn vivipara, atque hominem fac 10 ipsum,
cx ovo progigni ). This dictum, usually quoted as pal moe vivum ex ovo, would
alone stamp this work as worthy of res discoverer of the circulation of the
blood, but it was a prevision ,. genius, and was oot proved to be a fact until
K. E. von Baer is covered the mammaliah ovum in 1827. Harvey proceeds with
areful anatomical description of the ovary and oviduct of the hen, Au scribes
the new-laid egg, and then gives an account of the appear- do ~e seen on the
successive days of incubation, from the 1st to the .~r ~, the Ith and the 14th,
and lastly describes the process of a ( tchirig. He then comments upon and
corrects the opinions of cxc istotle and Fabricius, declares against
spontaneous generatioo pei ough iii one passage he seems to admit the current
doctrine of giv duction of worms by putrefaction as an exception), pfoves that
1 ire is no semen foemineum, that the chalazae of the hens eggs are Co the
semen galli, and that both parents contribute to the forma- OW
n of the egg. He describes
accurately the first appearance of the he arian ova as mere specks, their
assumption of yelk and after- th rds of albumen. In chapter xlv. he describes
two methods of I
)duction
of the embryo from the ovum: one is metamorphosis, or 0$
1
direct transformation of pre-existing material,- as a wotm from pri egg,
or a butterfly from an aurelia (chrysalis); the other is thi igenesis, or
development with addition of parts,. the true genera- to 11 observed in all
higher animals. Chapters xlvi.-l. are devoted rc the abstruse question of the
efficient cause of generation, which; p :er much discussion of the opinions of
Ariftotle and of Sennertius, Wi irvey refers to the action of both parents as
the efficient instru- di~ lnts of the first great cause.i He then goes on to
describe the Ot ler in which the several parts appear in the chick. He states
that a e punctum saliens or foetal heart is the fiist organ to be seen, and g I
plains that the nutrition of the chick is not only effected by yelk log nveyed
directly into the midgut, as Aristotle taught, but also by spi sorption frOm
yelk and white by the umbilical (omphalomeseraic) S ins; on the fourth day of
incubation appear two masses (which he dly names vermiculus), one of which
develops into three vesicles,, mt form the cerebrum, cerebellum and eyes, the
other into the mc lastbone and thorax; on the sixth or seventh day come the log
;cera, and lastly, the feathers and other external parts. Harvey ob:
ints out how nearly this
order of development in the chick agrees mc th what he had observed in
mammalian and particularly in human ibryos. He notes the bifid apex of the
foetal heart in man and th~ e equal thickness of the ventricles, the soft cartilages
which of present the future bones, the large amount of liquor arnnii and th
sence of placenta which characterize the foetus in the third month; he the
fourth the position of the testes in the abdomen, and the titerus th its
Fallopian tubes resembling the uterus bicornis of the sheep; ap e large
~hyrnus; the caecum, small, as in the adult, not forming a tu:
1
So in Exerc. liv~: Superior itaque et divinior opif cx, quam t homo,
videtur hominem fabricare et onservare, et nobilior tifex, quam gallus, pullum
cx ovo producere. ,Nempe agnoscimus wr corn, creatorem summum atque
om.nipotentem, in cunctoruin iimalium fabrica uhique praesentem esse, et
in.operibus sois quasi on gito monstrari: cujus in procreatione pulli
instrnmenta sint gallus sai gallina. .. . Nec cuiquam sane haec attributa
conveniunt nisi 16, umpotenti rerum Principio, quocu,nque demum nomine idipsum
qu pellare libuerit: five Mentem divinam curn Aristotele, sive cum tb latone
Animam Mundi, aut cum aliis Naturam naturantem, vel in im thnicis Saturpum aut
lovem; vel poti.us (ut nos de,cet) Crea- (L rem ac Patrem omniurn quae in
coelis et t~rris, a quo animalia M~ irumque origines dependent, cujusque nutu
sive effatu fiunt et Gi nerantur omnia. , (4:
t!~ie large suprarenal
veins, not much smaller than those of the seys (li.-lvi). He failed, however,
to trace the connection of urachus with the bladder. In the following chapters
(lxiii.i.) he describes the process of generation in the fallow deer or roe. After again insisting that all animals arise from ova, a
conception is an internal egg and an egg an extruded Deption, he goes on to
describe the uterus of the dOe, the process inpregnation, and the subsequent
development of the foetus and membranes, the punctum saliens, the cotyledons of
the placenta, the uterine milk, to which Sir William Turner recalled motion in
later years., The treatise ,concludes with detached is on the placenta,
parturition and allied subjects.
~arveys
other Writings and Medical Practice.The remaining tings of 1-larvey which are
extant are unimportant. A com:e list of them will be found below, together with
the titles of se which we know to be lost. Of these the most important -e
probably that on respiration, an.d the records of
postrtem examinations. From the following passage (De partu, ;5o) it seems that
he had a notion of respiration being conted rather with the production of
animal heat than, as then erally supposed, with the cooling of the blood. Haec
qui genter perpenderit, naturamque.aeris diligenter introspe~erit, ic opinor
fatebitur eundem nec refrigerationis gratia nec in ulum animalibus concedi.
Haec autem obiter duntaxat de )iratione diximus, ,proprio loco de eadem
forsitan copiosius :eptaturi.
)f
Harvey as a practising physician we know very little. ~rey tells us that he
paid his visits on horseback with a foot:h, his man following on foot, as the
fashion then was. He Is Though all of his profession would, allow him to, be an
client anatomist, I never heard any that,
admired his theratic way. I knew, several practitioners that would not have en
threepence fo~ one of his bills (the apothecaries used to ect physicians,
prescriptions and sell or publish them to their I profit), and that a man could
hardly tell by hfs bill what did aim at. However this may have been,and
rational rapeutics was impossible when the foufldktion.stone of physiog had
only just been laid,-awe know that Harvey was an active ctitioner, performing
such important surgical operations as removal of a breast, and he turned his
obstetric experience account in his book on generation. Some good practical
cepts as to the,conduct of labor are quoted by Percivall Llugbby (1596-1683).
He also took notes of the anatomy of lase; these unfortunately perished with
his other manuscripts. ierwise we might regard him as a forerunner of G. B.
Morni; for Harvey saw that pathology is but a branch of physioy, and, like it
must depend first on accurate anatomy., He aks strongly to this purpose in his
first epistle to Riolan:
cut enim sanorum et both
habitus corporum diss~tio plurim ad philosophiam et rectam physiologiam facit,
ita corporum rbosorum et cachecticorum inspectio potissimum .ad pathojam,
philosophicam. The only specimen we have of his ervations in morbid anatomy is his account of the postrtem examination made by order of
the king on the body of famous Thomas Parr, who died in 1635, at the reputed
age 152. Harvey insists on the value of physiological truths for ir own sake,
independently of their immediate utility; but himself gives us an interesting
example of the practical )lication of his theory of the circulation in the cure
of a large nour by tying the arteries which supplied it with blood (De erat.
Exerc. xix.).
tings of Harvy, published
and unpublished: ~xercita1io anatomica de motu cordis et .1 angwinis, 4to
(Frankfort -the-Main, 1628); Exercitatbones duae anatomicae de circulatione
guinis, ad Jolufnnem Riolanum, filium, Parisiensem (Cambridge, ~9);
Exercitationes de generatione animalium, gui bus accedunt fedam de partu, de
membranis ac humoribus uteri, et de concepSe, 4th (London, 1651); Anatomia
Thomae Parr, first published the treatise of Dr John Betts, De ortu et natura
sanguinis, 8vo )ndon, 1669). Letters: (I) to
Caspar Hoffmann of Nuremberg, iy 1636; (2) to Schlegel of Hamburg, April 1651;
(3) three to )vanni Nardi of Florence, July 1651, Dec. 1653 and Nov. 1655; two
to Dr Morison of Paris, May 1652; (5) two to Dr Horst of Darmstadt, Feb.
1654-1655 and July 655; (6) to
Dr Vlackveld of Haarlem, May 1657. His letters to Hoffmann and Schlegel are on
the circulation; those to Morison, Horst and Vlackveld refer to the discovery
of the lacteals; the two to Nardi are short letters of friendship. All these
letters were published by Sir George Ent in his collected works (Leiden, 1687).
Of two MS. letters, one on official business to the secretary Dorchester was
printed by Dr Aveling, with a facsimile of the crabbed handwriting (Memorials
of Harvey, 1875), and the other, about a patient, appears in Dr Robert Williss
Life of harvey (1878). Praelecliones anatomiae universalis I per me Gui.
Harvejum medicum Londinensem, anat. et chir. professorem, an. dam. (1616),
aekft. 37,MS. notes of his Lumleian lectures in Latin,are in the British Museum
library; an autotype reproduction was issued by the College of Physicians in
1886. An account of a second MS. in the British Mtiseum, entitled Gulielmus
Harveius de musrulis, mote beau, &c., was published by Sir C. E. Paget
(Notice of an unpublished MS. of Harvey, London, 1850). The following
treatises, or notes towards them, were lost either in the pillaging of Harveys
house, or perhaps in the fire of London, which destroyed the old College of
Physicians: A Treatise on Respiration, promised and probably at least in part
completed (pp. 82, 550, ed. 1766); Observationes de use Lienis; Observationes
de motu beau, perhaps identical with the above-mentioned manuscript; Tractatum
physiologicum; A natomia medicatis (apparently notes of morbid anatomy); De
generatione insectorum. The fine 4to edition of Harveys Works, published by the
Royal College of Physicians in 1766, was superintended by Dr Mark Ak-enside; it
contains the two treatises, the account of the post-mortem examination of old
Parr, and the six letters enumerated
above. A translation of this volume by Dr Willis, with Harveys will, was
published by the Sydenham Society, 8vo (London, 1849).
The following are the
principal biographies of Harvey: in Aubreys Letters of Eminent Persons,
&c., vol. ii. (London, 18f3), first published in 1685, the only
contemporary account; in Bayles Dictionnaire historique et critique (1698 and I
720; Eng. ed., 1738) in the
Biographia , and in Aitkens Biographical Memoirs; the Latin Life by Dr Thomas
Lawrence, prefixed to the college edition of Harveys Works in 1766; memoir in
Lives of British Physicians (London, 1830); a Life by Dr Robert Willis, founded
on that by Lawrence, and prefixed to his
English edition of Harvey in 1847; the much enlarged Life by the same author,
published in 1878; the biography by Dr William Munk in the Roil of the College
of Physicians, vol. i. (2nd ed., 1879).
The literature which has
arisen on the great discovery of Harvey, on his methods and his merits, would
fill a library. The most important contemporary writings have been mentioned
above. The following list gives some of the most remarkable in modern times:
the article in Bayles
dictionary quoted above; Anatomical Lectures, by \Vm. Hunter, M.D. (1784);
Sprengell, Geschichte der Arzneikunde (Halle, 1800), vol. iv.; Flourens,
Histoire de la circulation (1834); Lewes, Physiology of Common Life (1859),
vol. i. pp. 291-345; Ceradini,
La Scoperta della circoiazione del sangue (Milan, 1876); bum, Die Entdeckung
des Blutkreislaufs durch Michael Servet (Jena, 1876); Kirchner, Die Entdeckung
des Biutkreisiaufs (Berlin, 1878); \Villis, in his Life of Harvey; Wharton
Jones, Lecture on the Circulation of the Blood, Lancet for Oct. 25 and Nov. I,
1879; and the various Harveian Orations, especially those by Sir E. Sieveking,
Dr Guy anti Professor George Rolleston. (P. H. P.-S.)
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