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

From the first promulgation of the doctrine of the circulation, thus far its progress towards ultimate general acceptance can scarcely be said to have been interrupted for a moment. The hostility of the Primeroses and Parisanuses and Riolans never interfered with it in fact; the more candid spirits were rather led to make inquiry by the lucubrations of these weak and inconsistent opponents, who all, in the catastrophe of their discomfiture, hastened the triumph of the truth. If men's minds were ever 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 young physician of Venice, having met with one of those abnormal instances of pervious foramen ovale in an adult, immediately and without looking farther, jumped to the conclusion that the anomalous structure he had lighted on was natural, and that the blood passed in all cases by the route he proclaimed, from the right to the left side of the heart.

In the inaugural dissertation in which Foli pub

1 Plempii Fundamenta Medicinæ, fol., Lovan., 1652, p. 128.

2 Sanguinis a dextro in sinistrum Cordis Ventriculum defluentis facilis reperta via. Fol. Venet., 1639.

lished the discovery he had made, he shows himself a strenuous defender of the ancients generally—of Galen in particular. "Galen," he says, "knew that the veins anastomosed with the arteries; for it mattered not whether you divided one or other of these vessels, the animal still bled to death." Galen, he therefore concludes, must have known of the circulation, and Harvey in his opinion only revived a piece of knowledge that had fallen into oblivion.'

The engravings with which Foli illustrates his work show a small opening in the partition between the two sides of the heart, into which nothing larger than a probe could be passed, and by which, presuming the ventricles to act with like force-i.e., force commensurate with the resistance they have severally to overcome-not a drop of blood could have found its way, whether from right to left or from left to right. Many Italians received with favour the account which Foli gave of his discovery; and the natural philosopher, Gassendi, having about the same period had another instance of the kind which Foli 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.2 But this was only for a brief season;

1“ Quam quidem sententiam de sanguinis circulatione, oblivioni traditam, disputationi revocavit Gullielmus Herveus, vir sane perspicaci ingenio summoque virtute præditus." (Fol. 86.)

* Gassendi, De Septo Cordis pervio, which will be found published in a collection by Severinus Pinæus. 12mo. Leid., 1640.

for Domenic de Marchettis' by-and-by showed that Foli had mistaken an extremely rare occurrence for a general fact; and that if the foramen ovale, pervious, 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 thousands of other instances. Gassendi, moreover, by getting still more out of his depth, soon afterwards showed that familiarity with general physics did not imply any sufficient 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 seeing 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," " who lived to see the new doctrine which he had promulgated victorious over opposition and established in public opinion.

1 D. de Marchettis, Anatomia. 8vo. Padova, 1652.

2 Elementa Philosophiæ. Proemium.

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SECTION VIII.

USE OF HARVEY'S DISCOVERY: FONTENELLE.

We have had Harvey, when forced with evident reluctance to allude to the good that might accrue from his discovery, speaking of the flood of light that poured in upon him through its means; but this subject, lying outside of that on which he was immediately engaged, he contents himself by referring to his Medical Observations for its particular consideration, and concludes in these words: "I shall always be ready to listen to whatever is objected to me by good and learned men-nay, I shall even be grateful to any one who will take up and discuss the subjects that have engaged me."

With what has been added by the present writer on some of these on the cause of the heart's motion, on the transmutation of heat-force into life-force, following the physicists of the day, and on the essentially vital function of the sudoriparous and lymphatic systems of glands from himself, he ventures to believe that many physiological and pathological phenomena yet unexplained, may be satisfactorily interpreted; whilst hygienic principles are suggested, the importance and far-reaching significance of which cannot be over

S

estimated. Let us, therefore, yield in nowise to the suggestion which Monsieur Fontenelle, one of the lively writers of the last century, puts into the mouth of Erasistratus in his Dialogues des Morts,' viz., that the discovery of the circulation of the blood will have no influence on the rate of human mortality. Let us rather maintain that, as it is the foundation on which the Physics of animal life in its higher manifestations repose, so is it also the starting-point from which advances may be made adequate not only to take from the adverse influences to which life is exposed, but greatly to enlarge the sphere of those which tend to its conservation, in the forefront of

1 "ERAS. You do indeed tell me strange things! What! the blood circulates in the body?—the veins bring it to the heart from the extremities, and from the heart it enters the arteries to proceed to the extremities, from which it returns by the veins as before?

"HARV. I have shown that such is the fact by so many experiments that no one now doubts it.

"ERAS. We were all in the wrong, then, long ago; but I suppose you think your discovery very useful?

"HARV. Certainly, I do.

"ERAS. Tell me, then, how it comes that we see so many dead men joining us here below every day?

"HARV. Oh! if they die, that is their affair; it is no fault of the doctors.

"ERAS. But the circulation of the blood-those conduits, those reservoirs, and all you know about them, do not serve to keep folks alive?

HARV. We have not yet, perhaps, had time to know all the uses the discovery may be put to; we shall learn more by and by.

"ERAS. Take my word for it, there will be no change.

"HARV. Yet it would be singular if, in knowing the nature of man better, we did not also learn to cure diseases better.

"ERAS. Very good; but for my part, I fancy that the discovery of a new conduit in the animal body or a new star in the sky is of much the same importance in so far as the life of man is concerned. Make what discoveries in anatomy you may, men will go on dying all the same."