THE WORK ON GENERATION.

“You are my true and honourable wife;As dear to me as are the ruddy dropsThat 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 returnethTo 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 that Shakespeare had his knowledge direct from the fountain-head—from Harvey himself, with whom, for several years at least, he was contemporaneous.[53]

The passages quoted above are referred to all the more willingly, from their having preceded the teaching of Harvey by a few years only; but Shakespeare probably referred tonothing more than the accredited opinion that the blood was in motion within the vessels, particularly the veins of the body. In ancient times, indeed, the veins were regarded, as they are esteemed by the vulgar at the present hour, as the principal vessels of the body; they only were once believed to contain true blood; the arteries were held to contain at best but a little blood, different from that of the veins, and mixed accidentally in some sort with the vital spirits, of which they were the proper conduits.

In former times, farther,—times anterior to Harvey whether more remotely or more nearly,—the liver, as the organ of the hæmapoësis, was regarded as the source of all the veins, i. e. of all the proper blood-vessels; the heart, as the generator of heat and the vital spirits, was viewed as the mere cistern of the blood, whence it was propelled by the act of inspiration, and whither it reverted during the act of expiration, its flow to this part of the body or to that, being mainly determined by certain excitations there inherent or specially set up. By and by, however, the liver was given up as the origin of the venous system generally; but such anatomists as Jacobus Sylvius, Realdus Columbus, Bartholomæus Eustachius, and Gabriel Fallopius, may be found opposing Vesalius in regard to the origin of the vena cava, and asserting that it takes its rise from the liver, not from the heart, as the great reformer in modern anatomy had maintained.

In the progress of anatomical investigation, the valves in the interior of the heart, at the roots of the two great cardiac arterial trunks, and in the course of the veins at large, were perceived and their probable uses and actions canvassed. The general and prevalent notion was that they served to break or moderate the force of the current in the interior of the vessels or parts where they were encountered; though Berengarius of Carpi,[54]in describing the cardiac valves, had already said that the effect of the tricuspid valves, between the right auricle and ventricle, must be to prevent the blood in the former cavityfrom escaping into the latter; whilst the office of the semilunar valves, at the origins of the pulmonic artery and aorta, he declared, from their position, must be to prevent the entrance of the blood of the great arterial trunks into the heart. Fabricius, the master of Harvey, may be said to have perfected anatomical knowledge in regard to the valves of the veins—for he by no means first directed attention to their existence, or discovered them, as is generally asserted. Fabricius believed that their function was to act as obstacles to congestions of blood, as strengtheners of the veins and preventives to their becoming over-distended.

Another long and much agitated point in the anatomy of the sanguiferous system, was the state of the septum ventriculorum of the heart, in respect of permeability or impermeability. The reason of the vast importance attached to this point was connected with the ancient, and, in Harvey’s time, generally accredited hypothesis of the Three Spirits—the natural, the vital, and the animal. The hypothesis to be brought into play, was presumed to require the intermixture in the heart of the two kinds of blood that were held appropriate to the two ventricles and to the arteries and veins respectively, and that were farther believed to meet in the cavities of the cranium, thorax, and abdomen, from which they returned to the heart by the way they came, for a fresh supply of the spirits (now exhausted or enfeebled), under the agency of which all the important operations of the body were believed to be accomplished.

Now, Galen, the author of this hypothesis, in order to obtain an admixture of the two kinds of blood, feigned and described the partition between the two ventricles, either as perforated like a sieve, or as filled with depressions of depth sufficient to entitle them to be viewed as constituting a kind of third ventricle—the last assumption doubtless to accommodate each order of spirits with its own particular officine or workshop.With the revival of anatomical knowledge in modern Europe, however, the partition of the ventricles was soon perceived not to be porous or cribriform, but, as was first said, to be so nearly solid that any filtration of blood through it was well nigh impossible (Berengarius, 1521), and next, to be so completely solid that all permeation of blood was impossible (Vesalius, 1555), and another means must therefore be found for securing the necessary admixture of the two kinds of blood in order to effect the engenderment of the natural, animal, and vital spirits.

Such was the state of anatomical science and physiological belief on this particular point when Michael Servetus came upon the stage, and suggested the transit of the blood through the lungs from the right side of the heart to the left, with a view of meeting the difficulty which the undeniable solidity of the septum ventriculorum opposed to the presumed necessary admixture of the two kinds of blood. Servetus’s idea, consequently—if at the distance of three hundred years we may presume to follow the mental process that led to the penning of the remarkable and often-quoted passage which occurs in his works—appears to be nothing more than a suggestion or proposition as a means of meeting a difficulty; it is very much as though he had said: If you cannot go straight through, you must even go round about. To so much and to no more, do Servetus’s claims to be considered a discoverer, in the sense we would attach to that word, amount. The passage from the ‘Restitutio Christianismi’ of Servetus, 1553, if viewed from the point proposed, will not fail to set his title to be regarded as the discoverer of the lesser circulation in its true light—in a light under which it has not yet been seen. We translate so much of the passage as bears on the question under review. “The vital spirit has its origin in the left ventricle, the lungs assisting especially in its generation. It is a subtile spirit * * * It is engendered from the mixture that takes place in the lungs of the inspired air with the elaborated subtile blood whichthe right ventricle of the heart communicates to the left. But this communication takes place, not by the middle septum of the heart, as is commonly believed, but by a remarkable artifice; the subtile blood of the right side of the heart is agitated in a lengthened course through the lungs, whereby it is elaborated, from which it is thrown of a crimson colour, and from the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery) is transfused into the arteria venosa (pulmonary veins); it is then mixed in the arteria venosa itself with the inspired air, and by the act of expiration is purified from fuliginous vapours, when, having become the fit recipient of the vital spirit, it is at length attracted by the diastole. Now, that the communication and preparation take place as stated through the lungs, is proclaimed by the various conjunctions and communications of the arterial vein with the venous artery. The remarkable size of the arterial vein (pulmonary artery) confirms this, a vessel which could neither have its actual constitution nor dimensions, nor transmit such a quantity of the purest blood direct from the heart itself, for the mere nourishment of the lungs. Neither would the heart supply the lungs in such proportion, (especially when we see the lungs in the embryo nourished from another source) by reason of those membranes or valves which remain unopened until the hour of birth, as Galen teaches. The blood, consequently, from the moment of birth, is sent, and in such quantity is sent, for another purpose from the heart into the lungs; from the lungs also it is not simple air that is sent to the heart, but air mixed with blood is transmitted through the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein). In the lungs consequently does the mixture take place. The crimson colour is imparted to the spirituous blood by the lungs, not by the heart. There is not room enough in the left ventricle of the heart for so important and so great an admixture; neither is there space there for the elaboration into the crimson colour. Finally, the septum medium, seeingthat it is without vessels and properties, is not adapted to accomplish that communication and elaboration, although something may transude through it.”

The discussion in this passage from Servetus obviously concerns the generation of the vital spirit, not the pulmonic circulation properly so called—that is altogether secondary and subordinate. His mention of “numerous communications between the vena arteriosa and the arteria venosa,” is plainly conjectural; neither he, nor any one else for a century after him, saw such communications. The course through the lungs, then, as suggested by Servetus, was a mere hypothetical proposal for getting over the difficulty of the solid, or nearly solid, septum ventriculorum. As to the means by which such a transfusion as he suggests, is effected, Servetus, as he was profoundly ignorant himself, so does he leave his readers entirely in the dark. The transmission of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart, which Servetus proposed, is in fact, no great improvement on the old efflux and reflux, like the tides of Euripus, betwixt Attica and Eubœa. He had no conception of a circle of the blood beginning and ending in the heart. On the contrary, he regarded the liver as the fountain-head of the blood; and if he has any reference to a moving power in connexion with the heart, it is nothing more than the diastole or dilatation of the organ that is named—a passive state therefore considered as an active and efficient cause, which is absurd.

The first modern anatomist of high repute, who treats particularly of the motion of the blood, may be said to be Realdus Columbus;[55]for Servetus, though educated to the medical profession, had long forsaken it for divinity, and only uses his old anatomical knowledge as a means of illustrating a theological dogma. Columbus, in treating of the heart and lungs, has certainly much that is remarkable, and much that is true;and had he said nothing more than we find in single detached sentences or paragraphs of his book, he must have been regarded as having gone a great length in the right direction. The blood, he says, once it has entered the right ventricle from the vena cava, can in no way again get back; for the tricuspid valves are so placed that whilst they give a ready passage to the stream inwards, they effectually oppose its return. The blood continuing to advance from the right ventricle into the vena arteriosa or pulmonary artery, once there cannot flow back upon the ventricle, for it is opposed by the sigmoid valves situate at the root of the vessel. The blood, therefore, agitated and mixed with the air in the lungs, and having thus in some sort acquired the nature of spirit, is carried by the arteria venosa or pulmonary vein into the left ventricle, from whence, being received into the aorta, it is, by the ramifications of this vessel, transmitted to all parts of the body.

This much taken by itself looks very like an exposition of the circulation of the blood as understood at the present time, though we still see that the blood must be made to participate in the nature of spirit before it enters the arteries, and is not the blood which is contained in the veins, and which nourishes the body; but when we go farther and turn to other parts of his writings, we see that Columbus could never have conceived any proper idea of the circulation. For example, he continues, with Galen, to regard the liver as the origin of all the veins. The vena portæ, he says, arising by innumerable roots from the concavity of the liver, proceeds to carry blood from this organ by different branches to the stomach, spleen, and intestines, to the end that it may convey nourishment in the first case, black bile in the second, and in the third serve a double function—viz. supply nourishment to the intestines at once, and by a kind of imbibition, obtain nutritive matter, which is forthwith sent back to the liver for elaboration into blood. The vena cava again, he describes as arising from the convex aspect of theliver, whence, by its ramifications, it carries the blood that is requisite to nourish and maintain every part of the body.

This of itself is enough. But when, in addition, we find that Columbus denies the muscular nature of the heart, we are fully qualified to form a true estimate of the conception which he could have had of the motion of the blood, and of his right to be regarded as the discoverer of its ceaseless circular movement.

The next who is brought upon the scene with the imputed honour of having had a knowledge, not only of the lesser, but of the greater or systemic circulation also, is Andreas Cæsalpinus,[56]of Arezzo. The account which this celebrated peripatetic philosopher gives of the passage of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart is essentially the same as that given by Columbus. From the right ventricle the blood passes into the pulmonic artery, and from this, by numerous anastomoses, into the pulmonic veins, which transmit it to the left ventricle. Cæsalpinus says well that it is absurd to call the pulmonary artery by the name of vena arteriosa, on the mere ground of its taking its departure, like the vena cava, from the right ventricle; it is a true artery, and is, in all respects, analogous to the aorta. The title of arteria venosa, again, given to the pulmonic vein is not less ridiculous; inasmuch as this vessel, though it end in the left ventricle, has all the properties of the veins at large.

So far it looks as if Cæsalpinus had an exact idea of the pulmonary circulation; indeed, he uses the word Circulation in reference to the transit of the blood through the lungs; but when we discover him still speaking of the permeation of the septum ventriculorum by the blood, our faith in the extent and accuracy of his knowledge begins to waver.

With reference to the greater or systemic circulation, again,Cæsalpinus speaks of the swelling of the veins between the circle of pressure and the extremities of the vessels, when a ligature is thrown round a limb; and he even goes so far as to state that the common opinion which admitted a progressive motion—i. e. a motion from trunks to branches—of the blood in the veins was erroneous. Did we go no farther we should be led to conclude, as in Columbus’s case, that Cæsalpinus believed in the continuous movement of the blood in the veins in one direction only; and, as he has already spoken of the exit of the blood from the left ventricle, and of its reception by the aorta for general distribution, it might forthwith be inferred that, possessed of the essential elements of the greater circulation, he must, as matter of course, have been familiar with this as an ultimate result. And such an inference has indeed been drawn for him by high authority; but Cæsalpinus came not himself to any such conclusion; it was arrived at by others in his behalf, and after the lapse of almost a century from the date of his first publication. When we find Cæsalpinus, in other and closely connected passages of his writings, singing the old cuckoo note about a flux and reflux of the blood in the veins, and even using the accredited word—Euripus—to express his idea of its tide-like nature; when we further perceive that he was ignorant of the existence of the valves of the veins, and finally arrive at his explanation of the cause of the swelling which takes place in the veins of an extremity beyond a ligature,—the cause with him consisting in an effort of the blood to get back to the focus or centre, lest, through the compression of the veins, it should be cut off and suffocated,—we not only feel that we were warranted in entertaining a wholesome scepticism of the conclusion come to by the admirers of Cæsalpinus in regard to his knowledge of a circulation of the blood; but waxing in our infidelity as we become farther acquainted with his thoughts on the constitution ofthe blood, we find everything opposed to the likelihood of his having arrived at the same result as Harvey; and, at length, we discover that he neither had nor could have had any true knowledge of the circulation. Starting from the Aristotelian doctrines of growth and nutrition (of which so much will be found in Harvey’s work on Generation), Cæsalpinus held that there were two kinds of blood, one for the growth, another for the nourishment of the body. The blood which went to augment the body, and which he designated alimentum auctivum, or aliment of increase, flowed from the liver into the vena cava, which he seems to have thought was connected with the heart only, ut inde virtus omnis a corde descendat—that a sufficiency of virtue might be thereby communicated to it. The auctive blood, he farther thought, was attracted into the ventricles of the heart by the inherent heat of the organ. The dilatation of the heart and arteries he imagined to be due to “an effervescence of the spirit;” and the cause of their “collapse”—not systole, be it observed, in the active sense—was the appropriation by the parts of the body of the nutritive and augmentative matter. Again, though Cæsalpinus speaks of the intercommunication of the minute arteries and veins, he still thought that it was only during sleep that the blood mixed with the spirits passed from the former into the latter class of vessels; for it is during sleep, he says, that the veins become distended, whilst the pulsations of the arteries are then moderated. He plainly sees no connexion between a delivery by the artery and a filling by the vein. It is along with all this, and as if to settle the question of the kind of knowledge Cæsalpinus had of the movement of the blood, that he uses the old word Euripus, to express his idea of its alternating or tide-like motion.

Cæsalpinus, let us add, had no conception of the heart as the efficient cause of any motion which the blood might have.In the often-quoted passage from the work ‘De Plantis,’[57]it is still the spirit inherent in, or associated with, the blood, that is the cause of its motion.

Cæsalpinus, consequently, tried by a very moderately searching criticism, presents himself to us as but very little farther advanced than the ancients in his ideas on the motion of the blood.—The interpretation which successive generations of men give to a passage in a writer, some century or two old, is very apt to be in consonance with the state of knowledge at the time, in harmony with the prevailing ideas of the day, and, doubtless, often differs signally from the meaning that was in the mind of the man who composed it. The world saw nothing of the circulation of the blood in Servetus, Columbus, Cæsalpinus, or—Shakespeare, until after William Harvey had taught and written.

The truth is, that some of the foremost grounds of Harvey’s claims to rank as a discoverer are very commonly overlooked. We always associate his name and fame with the development of the ultimate fact of the circulation of the blood. But Harvey, as a step to this conclusion, first demonstrated the heart as the means by which the circulation was effected; and he farther showed that there was butonekind of blood, common to both the arteries and the veins. Up to his time the heart was regarded as the passive cistern of the blood, and the elaboratory of the vital spirits; it was not known as the moving instrument in any efflux or reflux of the blood, or even of any lesser circulation that had been previously asserted or conjectured. The moving power was still the respiratory act. Harvey may be said to have first broached, as he also essentially completed the physiology of the heart’s actions. The circular motion of the blood followed as a necessary corollary from these. The “motion of the heart” has even precedence in the title of his immortal work; the chapter in whichhe first enters properly on his subject (Chap. 2), is devoted to its consideration. And then, no physiologist up to Harvey’s time had questioned the existence of two kinds of blood, one appropriate to each order of vessels, and answering different ends in the economy.

The only name still wanting in this historical sketch, till we come to Harvey, is that of Fabricius of Aquapendente, his teacher in anatomy. Fabricius had given particular attention, among other subjects, to the anatomy of the valves of the veins, which he entitled ostila venarum. Fabricius, indeed, possessed so thorough a knowledge of the valvular elements of the vascular system, that it is really astonishing, as an able writer[58]has remarked, that he should not have had clearer ideas on the functions, among other things, of the pulmonary veins, and should have continued a rigid adherent to the prejudices which prevailed before his time. Fabricius could observe, and he could describe; but he wanted the combining intellect that infers, the imagination that leads to new ideas—to discovery. Though he did little himself, however, to advance the sum of human knowledge, he proved a tooth in the wheel that has since put in motion the whole machinery of modern medical science. He it was who sowed the seed, little dreaming of its kind, which, finding one spot of congenial soil, sprung up a harvest that has continued to nurture the world of physiological science to the present hour.[59]

Having now disposed of the claims that have been set up in behalf of one or another as the discoverer of the circulation, and shown, we trust satisfactorily, that these are all alike untenable, we should now proceed to discuss the question of the cui bono?—but this meets us in so forbidding an aspect, brimful as is our mind with a sense of the all-importance of the knowledge we had from Harvey, and seems so little to belong to our subject, that we gladly pass it by unnoticed; though it be only to find ourselves encountered by that other topic, but little more congenial to our mood of mind and intimate persuasion: The merit of Harvey as a discoverer. Few, very few have been found to question this; but as one man of undeniable learning and eminence in his profession,[60]has very strangely, as it seems to us, been led to do so, it will not be impertinent if we cast away a few words on this matter.

Discovery is of several, particularly of two kinds: one sensible or perceptive; another rational or inductive; the former an act of simple consciousness through an impression made on one or more of the senses; the latter a conclusion come to by the higher powers of the understanding dealing with data previously acquired by the senses and perceptive faculties.—We look through a telescope, for example, and we perceive a star which no one else had seen before; we note the fact, and so become discoverers of a new star. The merit here is not, surely, very great, though the added fact may be highly important. Again, one of the planets is subject to such perturbations in its course that to compose exact tables of its orbit is held impossible. These perturbations are referable to none of the known perturbing causes. A great astronomer suggests the influence of an exterior and unknown planet as their cause. Aconsummate mathematician and physical astronomer makes trial of this suggestion: he assumes the ascertained perturbations as elements, he combines these under the guidance of knowledge and reason, and at length he says, if the cause suggested be well founded, there or thereabouts must it exist; and lo! on turning the far-seeing tube to the point in space which he had indicated, there in verity gleams a new world, then first seen, though launched by God from Eternity to circle on the verge of our creation; and he who bade us look becomes the discoverer of a new planet. Who will dispute the merit here? Truly, man does show the God within him when he uses his faculties—God-like in themselves—in such God-like fashion. But Harvey’s merit, according to our idea, was of the selfsame description in another sphere. The facts he used were familiarly known, most of them to his predecessors for nearly a century, all of them to his teachers and immediate contemporaries; yet did no one, mastering these facts in their connexion and sequence, rising superior to prejudice, groundless hypothesis, and erroneous reasoning, draw the inference that now meets the world as irresistible, until the combining mind of Harvey gave it shape and utterance. To our apprehension Harvey was as far above his fellows as the eye of poetic intelligence, that exultingly absorbs the beauties of the starry sky and the green earth, is above the mere physical sense that distinguishes light from dark. The late Dr. Barclay, a fervent admirer of Harvey, whose name he never uttered without the epithet immortal, has put the question of Harvey’s merit both happily and eloquently, and it affords us pleasure to quote the passage from the writings of our old and honoured teacher in anatomy. “The late Dr. Hunter,” says Dr. Barclay,[61]“has rather invidiously introduced Harvey along with Copernicus and Columbus, to show that his merit as a discoverer was comparatively low. But what did Copernicus, and what didColumbus? Not in possession of more numerous facts than their contemporaries, but endowed with nobler and more vigorous intellects, the one developed the intricate system of the heavenly bodies and the other discovered an unheard-of continent. Was it not in the same way, by the exertion of superior intellect, that Harvey made his immortal discovery? I know not what has happened in the world unseen; but if I may judge from the records of history and the annals of fame, the spirit of Bacon, the spirits of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton have not been ashamed to welcome and associate with the congenial spirit of Harvey.” To this fine passage there is little to be added: Harvey’s discovery was of the rational and inductive and therefore higher class, according to our estimate; it was made in virtue of the intellectual powers which peculiarly distinguish man, possessed in a state of the highest perfection.

In our account of Harvey’s public career we found him busy with the subject of Generation at Oxford in 1642; but he had certainly turned his attention that way at a much earlier period, for one of the chief causes of his regret, as expressed to Dr. Ent, for the destruction of his papers during the civil war, is the loss of his Observations on the Generation of Insects, which could only have been made and reduced to form many years previously, probably before his engagement to accompany the Duke of Lennox on his travels. And then we see that all his notes on the gestation of the hind or doe were made in the palmy days of the first Charles, before the differences between him and the people of these countries had come to the arbitrement of arms. Harvey probably occupied a good deal of his leisure in arranging and writing the work on Generation, after quitting the service of Charles in 1646; his practiceat this period was not extensive, and he seems to have passed much of his time in the country. Harvey appears to have been little inclined to the publication of this work, and only to have ventured it out of his hands with reluctance. Without the solicitations of Ent, indeed, it would certainly have been left unpublished during his lifetime. Ent, however, succeeded in carrying off the prize which his illustrious friend had showed him, and lost no time in getting it into types, taking on himself the task of correcting the press, and sending it forth according to his own ideas in fitting form, with a frontispiece, and a highflown dedication to the President and Fellows of the College of Physicians. Ent’s account of his interview with Harvey on the occasion of obtaining his consent to the publication, though highly theatrical, is still extremely interesting. Saluting the great anatomist, and asking if all were well with him, Harvey answers, somewhat impatiently as it seems: “How can it, whilst the Commonwealth is full of distractions, and I myself am still in the open sea? And truly,” he continues, “did I not find solace in my studies, and a balm for my spirit in the memory of my observations of former years, I should feel little desire for longer life.” (p. 145.) Let the reader turn to the page from which the above quotation is taken, and to the one which follows it, for thoughts and views that clearly bespeak the greatness of intellect, the nobleness of sentiment that distinguished William Harvey. When Ent proceeds to say that the learned world, aware of his indefatigable industry, were eagerly looking for other works at his hands, the fervid genius of the poet or discoverer still appears in his reply: “And would you be the man,” said Harvey, smiling, “who should recommend me to quit the peaceful haven, where I now pass my life, and launch again upon the faithless sea? You know full well what a storm my former lucubrations raised. Much better is it oftentimes to grow wise at home and in private, than by publishing what you have amassed with infinite labour, to stir up tempests that may rob you of peace and quiet for the rest of your days.” (p. 147.) By and by, however, he produces his Exercises on the Generation of Animals, and though he makes many difficulties at first, urging, among other things, that the work must be held incomplete, as containing nothing on the generation of insects, Ent, nevertheless, prevails in the end, and receives the papers with full authority, either speedily to commit them to the press, or to delay their publication to a future time. Ent set about his office of midwife, as he has it, forthwith, and the following year (1651) saw the birth of the work on Generation.

Physiological science generally was not sufficiently advanced in Harvey’s time to admit of a truly great and enduring work being produced on a subject so abstruse, and involving so many particulars as that of Generation. On the doctrine of the circulation the dawn had long been visible; Harvey came and the sun arose. On the subject of animal reproduction, all was night and darkness two centuries ago; and though the light has still been waxing in strength since Harvey wrote, it is only in these times that we have seen it brightening into something like the day. In Harvey’s time the very means and instruments that were indispensable to the investigation were not yet known, or were used of powers inadequate to bring the prime facts within the cognizance of the senses. Harvey doubtless did as much as any man living could have accomplished when he wrote. He announced the general truth: Omne animal ex ovo; he showed the cicatricula of the egg as the point where the reproductive process begins; he corrected numerous errors into which his master Fabricius had fallen; he further pointed out the path of observation and experiment as the only one that could lead to satisfactory results in the investigation of a subject which gradually displayed itself as one of natural history; and, it may be added, by his wanderings in the labyrinth of the metaphysics of physiological science, he did enough to deter any one from attempting to tread such barren ground again. In his work on the Heart and Blood, Harvey had all the essential facts of the subject clearly before him, and he used them at once in such masterly-wise, that he left little or nothing for addition either by himself or others. Secure of his footing here, he could well dispense with “vital spirits,” “innate heat,” and other inscrutable agencies, he could leave “adequate and efficient causes,” and other metaphysical phantoms on one side—it was physics that he was dealing with, and the physician was at home. With the information we now possess, we see clearly how indifferently weaponed was the physiologist of the year 1647 for encountering such a subject as Animal Generation; a Leeuwenhoek and a De Graaf, a Spallanzani and a Haighton, a Wolff, a Purkinje, a Von Baer, a Valentin, a Rudolph Wagner, a Bischoff, and many more, had successively to appear, before the facts of the subject could be ascertained, and a Schleiden and a Schwann were further necessary as ultimate interpreters of the things observed before they could be either rightly or wholly understood. No wonder then that The Physiologist of the 17th century, meets us in the guise of one rather puzzled with the burthen he has made up his mind to bear, and, contrary to his former wont, eking out the lack of positive knowledge by reiterated disquisitions on topics where certainty is unattainable.

It is rather curious, moreover, to find Harvey, in his work on Generation, not entirely escaping the pitfall of which he was so well aware, and which he shunned so successfully in his earlier production. In the work on the Heart, he sets out with the certainty that the whole of the notions of the ancients on the heart and blood are untenable; and then, taking Nature for his guide, his fine intellect never once suffers him to stray from the right path. In the book on Generation, on the other hand, he begins by putting himself in some sortinto the harness of Aristotle, and taking the bit of Fabricius between his teeth; and then, either assuming the ideas of the former as premises, or those of the latter as topics of discussion or dissent, he labours on endeavouring to find Nature in harmony with the Stagyrite, or at variance with the professor of Padua—for, in spite of many expressions of respect and deference for his old master, Harvey evidently delights to find Fabricius in the wrong. Finally, so possessed is he by scholastic ideas, that he winds up some of his opinions upon animal reproduction by presenting them in the shape of logical syllogisms.

The age of Harvey, then, was not competent to produce a work on generation,—it was still an impossible undertaking. Yet has Harvey written a remarkable book; one that teems with interesting observation, and that presents the author to us in the character of the elegant writer, the scholar, and the poet as well as the discoverer—if, indeed, poet and discoverer, though variously applied, be not identical terms. Besides the points already referred to, as immediately connected with his subject, we here find Harvey anticipating modern surgery, by applying a ligature to the main artery of a tumour which he wished to extirpate, and so making its subsequent removal much more easy. Here, too, we find him, a century and a half before his contemporaries, in the most rapidly progressive period in the history of human knowledge, throwing out the first hint of the true use of the lungs. Hitherto the lungs had been regarded as surrounding the heart for the purpose of ventilating the blood and tempering or moderating its heat, the heart being viewed as the focus or hearth of the innate heat; and Harvey himself generally uses language in harmony with these ideas; but in one instance, the lightning of genius giving him a glimpse of the truth, he says, “Air is given neither for the cooling nor the nutrition of animals * * *it is as if heat were rather enkindled within the fœtus [at birth] than repressed by the influence of the air.”[62]

Had William Harvey possessed this idea in his earlier years, and pursued it as he did that of the blood never moving in the veins but in one recurrent course, he would at least have prepared the way for another grand discovery in physiology: demonstrating the erroneousness of the current physiological notions on the use of the lungs, he would have led the van in the investigation of their proper office; and, had everything else permitted, he might even have anticipated Joseph Black in explaining the source of animal heat. But this was an impossibility at the time: chemistry, in Harvey’s day, mostly in the hands of adepts and charlatans, transmuters of the base metals, and searchers after the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life, could have no attractions for the clear intellect of the demonstrator of the circulation of the blood. No wonder, therefore, that Harvey “did not care for chymistrey,” or that “he was wont to speak against the chymists” (Aubrey, l. c. p. 385); this anecdote is but another proof of Harvey’s sagacity. Harvey then could only show himself in advance of his age by questioning its opinions on the office of the lungs as he does; the state of chemical science in the middle of the 17th century did not admit of his doing more. Harvey, however, well knew the vivifying force of heat: he saw it the immediate indispensable agent in the reproduction of a living sentient being, as it is probably employed by the Creator as mainspring in the elaborate mechanism of the automatic animal body.

The short piece on theAnatomyofThomas Parr, is interesting in itself; and in giving us a glimpse of Harvey’s style of pathological reasoning, confirms us in our faith in thegreat physiologist as a practitioner of medicine. If knowledge will not help, how should the want of it avail?

TheLettersof Great men generally serve to make us more intimately acquainted with them than without such aid we could have become. This is more especially the case as respects the letters that are written in the ease and confidence of private friendship. It is greatly to be regretted that so few of the letters of this description that flowed from the pen of Harvey should have come down to us. Those addressed to Giovanni Nardi, however, show us what an affectionate and elegant mind our Harvey possessed; how mindful he always appears of former kindnesses to himself and to those that were near to him; how anxious that he should be cherished in the memory of his friends, even as he cherishes them in his own!

The other letters we possess are mostly upon professional—physiological topics; though the one addressed from Nuremberg to Caspar Hofmann may, perhaps, be held an exception; for in this letter the manly and candid character of Harvey displays itself conspicuously. In his own city he challenges the Nuremberg professor to the proof. “If you would see with your own eyes the things I assert of the circulation, I promise to show them to you with the opportunity afforded me.” We have seen that Harvey accompanied the Earl of Arundel in his extraordinary embassy to the Emperor, in 1636, and may probably have been one of the party of which three members were barbarously murdered on their way, from Nuremberg to Ratisbon, as Crowne[63]informs us. Hence the solicitude which Hollar, the artist, who also accompanied the ambassador, informed Aubrey the Earl of Arundel expressed for his physician’s safety: “For he would still be making of excursions into the woods, making observations of strange trees, plants, earths, &c., and sometimes like to be lost; so that mylord ambassador would be really angry with him, for there was not only danger of wild beasts but of thieves.”[64]

The burthen of the long and able letter to Siegel, of Hamburg, is still the Circulation. The one addressed to Morison, and the two to Horst, treat of the discovery of the receptaculum chyli and thoracic duct by Pecquet. Harvey has been held wanting to his greatness in having refused his assent to the facts of the distinct existence and special office of the lymphatic system. But, non omnia possumus omnes; Harvey had his own work laid out for him, and the lymphatic system was not a part of it. Aselli’s book on the ‘Lacteal Viens,’[65]was even published before Harvey’s own Exercises on the Heart and Blood had appeared, and must have been familiar to our physiologist; but that he failed to perceive the import of that discovery, and never inquired particularly into it, cannot surely be rightly laid to him as a charge; and then, when the newly-discovered system of vessels acquired extension from the researches of Pecquet, Rudbeck, and Bartholin, Harvey felt that he was both too old and too infirm to enter on the examination of so extensive and delicate an anatomical question. In entire consistency with his noble nature, however, and in striking contrast with his own opponents, he nowhere formally denies the existence of the new lymphatic vessels; nor does he once oppose the authority of his name to the investigation of the truth. On the contrary, he states his objections, “not as being obstinately wedded to his own opinion, but that he may show what can readily be urged in opposition to the advocates of the new ideas. Nor do I doubt,” he proceeds, “but that many things now hidden in the well of Democritus, will by and by be drawn up into day by the ceaseless industry of a coming age.”[66]

The letter to Vlackveld was written the very year, within a few weeks indeed, of his death. It is even touching—it is in vain, he says, to his correspondent, that he would apply the spur; he has already felt his right to demand his release from duty; yet would he still be honorably considered by his contemporaries, and he begs his friend Vlackveld to love him to the last.

We have taken occasion from time to time in the course of our narrative, to glance at the mental and moral constitution, and also at the personal character, of Harvey, principally by way of inference from his conduct on particular occasions, and from what appears in his writings. Happily we have in addition a few particulars from the pen of a contemporary, John Aubrey,[67]which, though perchance they do not harmonize in every respect with the facts in his public life and the portrait he gives us of himself in his works, are nevertheless extremely interesting, and cannot be left unnoticed in a Life of Harvey.

“In person,” Aubrey informs us, “Harvey was not tall, but of the lowest stature; round faced; olivaster (like wainscot) complexion; little eye, round, very black, full of spirit; his hair black as a raven, but quite white 20 years before he died.” The portrait we have of Harvey by Cornelius Jansen, in the library of the Royal College of Physicians, as well as of one, we presume by Bemmel, now in the possession of Dr. Richard Bright, corresponds with this account: the temperament is nervous-bilious; the forehead is compact and square, and of greater width than usual between the temples; the expression is highly intellectual, contemplative, and manly.

“In temper,” Aubrey says, “he was like the rest of his brothers, very choleric, and, in his younger days, he wore a dagger, as the fashion then was, which he would be apt to drawout upon every occasion.” We cannot suppose that this was offensively, but merely in the way of gesticulation, and to lend force to his words; for in his public and literary life, Harvey showed everything but a choleric nature: he seems, indeed, at all times to have had his temper under entire control. The way in which Harvey himself speaks of the robbery of his apartments and the destruction of his papers, has nothing of bitterness or acrimony in it. With the opportunity presenting itself to him—as when he sends Nardi the books on the Troubles in England—he is not tempted to utter even a splenetic word against the party which had been all along opposed to his friends, and by which he had suffered so severely. Harvey was, probably, a marked man by Cromwell and his adherents; but had he been so disposed he could have indulged in a little vituperation without risk of molestation. The government of England in the Protector’s time was still no tyranny.

Harvey appears not to have esteemed the fair sex very highly. He would say, that “we Europeans knew not how to order or govern our women, and that the Turks were the only people who used them wisely.” But, indeed, if Aubrey may be trusted, he did not think very much of mankind in general: he was wont to say, that “man was but a great mischievous baboon.” Harvey, however, wived young, and in his age he seems still to have thought that the old man was best tended by the gentle hand of a woman not too far stricken in years.[68]

Harvey, in his own family circle, must have been affectionate and kind,—characteristics of all his brothers—who appear as we have said to have lived together through their lives in perfect amity and peace. But our Harvey’s sympathies were not limited to his immediate relatives: attachment, friendship was an essential ingredient in his nature. His will from first to last is a piece of beautiful humanity, and more than one widow and helpless woman is there provided for.He seems to have been very anxious to live in the memory of his sisters-in-law and of his nephews and nieces, whose legacies are mostly given to the end that they may buy something to keep in remembrance of him. To Dr. Ent he was much attached, and, besides his bookcases, there are ‘five pounds to buy a ring.’ Dr. Scarborough, who also stood high in Harvey’s favour, has his ‘silver instruments of surgery and his best velvet gown.’

We cannot fancy that Harvey was at any time very eager in the pursuit of wealth. Aubrey tells us that, “For twenty years before he died, he took no care of his worldly concerns; but his brother Eliab, who was a very wise and prudent manager, ordered all, not only faithfully, but better than he could have done for himself.” The effect of this good management was that Harvey lived, towards the end of his life, in very easy circumstances. Having no costly establishment to maintain, for he always lived with one or other of his brothers in his latter days, and no family to provide for, he could afford to be munificent, as we have seen him, to the College of Physicians, and at his death he is reported to have left as much as 20,000l.to his faithful steward and kind brother Eliab, who always meets us as the guardian angel of our anatomist, in a worldly and material point of view. Honoured be the name and the memory of Eliab Harvey for his good offices to one so worthy!

Though of competent estate, in the enjoyment of the highest reputation, and trusted by two sovereign Princes in succession, Harvey never suffered his name to be coupled with any of those lower-grade titles that were so freely conferred in the time of both the First and Second Charles. When we associate Harvey’s name with a title at all, it is with the one he fairly won from his masters of Padua: by his contemporaries he is always spoken of as Dr. Harvey; we in the present day rightly class him with our Shakespeares, and our Miltons, and speak of him as Harvey. Harvey, indeed, had no love of ostentation ordisplay. The very buildings he erected, were built “at the suggestion and under the auspices” of others.

Harvey’s mind was largely imbued with the imaginative faculty: how finely he brings in the classical allusion to “the Sicilian sea, dashing among the rocks around Charybdis, hissing and foaming and tossed hither and thither,” in illustration of those who reason against the evidence of their senses, (p. 130.) And then what unbounded confidence he has in Nature (p. 153), and how keenly alive he is to her beauties in every sphere: Nature has not been sedulous to deck out animals only with ornaments; she has further thrown an infinite variety of beautiful dyes over the lowly and insensate herbs and flowers. (p. 426.)

In Harvey the religious sentiments appear to have been active; the exordium to his will is unusually solemn and grand. He also evinces true and elevated piety throughout the whole course of his work on Generation, and seizes every opportunity of giving utterance to his sense of the immediate agency and omnipotence of Deity. He appears, with the ancient philosophers, to have regarded the universe and its parts as actuated by a Supreme and all-pervading Intelligence. He was a great admirer of Virgil, whose works were frequently in his hands, and whose religious philosophy he seems also, in a great measure, to have adopted. The following beautiful and often-quoted passage of his favorite author may be said to embody his ideas on this subject, as they appear repeatedly in the course of the work on Generation:—

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