This list of harmless little eccentricities is further enlarged by Aubrey, who says: “He was always very contemplative and was wont to frequent the leads of Cockaine House, which his brother Eliab had bought, having there his several stations in regard to the sun and the wind for the indulgence of his fancy; whilst at the house at Combe in Surrey, he had caves made in the ground in which he delighted in the summer-time to meditate.” He also loved darkness, telling Aubrey “that he could then best contemplate.” “His thoughts working would many times keep him from sleeping, in which case his way was to rise from his bed and walk about his chamber in his shirt till he was pretty cool and then return to his bed and sleep very comfortably.” He was ready at all times to communicate what he knew and to instruct any that were modest and respectful to him, and when Aubrey was starting for Italy “he dictated to me what to see, what company to keep, what books to read, and how to manage my studies—in short, he bid me go to the fountain head and read Aristotle, Cicero, and Avicenna, and did call the Neoteriques” by a foul name.

Dr. Ent has left a striking picture of the old man at Christmas, 1650, nearly a year after the execution of the King. It shows at first a weariness of spirit which we would fain hope was not quite natural to him, like the sadness of age which is so marked a feature in the life-like portrait left by Janssen. Dr. Ent’s account is the epistle dedicatory to Harvey’s work on the development of animals, and it so clearly shows the man in the fashion as he lived, and as his beloved pupil saw him, that I have not ventured to shorten it. The Epistle is addressed:—

This account brings home to us the charm of Harvey’s personality. Beloved by his family and honoured by the College of Physicians, the old man went to his grave amidst the genuine grief of all who knew him. The publication of his essay on Development in 1651 was almost his last literary effort. He wrote a few letters to different friends abroad which show that his mind was still actively engaged upon the problem of the circulation of the blood, but nothing more of importance appeared from his pen. His love for the College of Physicians remained unabated, and he gave proof of it in a most practical manner. At an extraordinary Comitia held July 4, 1651, Dr. Prujean, the President, read a written paper to the assembled Fellows which contained the following proposition: “If I can procure one that will build a library and a repository for simples and rarities, such a one as shall be suitable and honourable to the College, will you assent to have it done or no, and give me leave and such others as I shall desire to be the designers and overlookers of the work both for conveniency and ornament?” This offer from an anonymous donor was too handsome to meet with other than immediate acceptance, and as the Annals of the College express it, “super hac re prompté gratéque itum est ab omnibus in suffragia” [the proposition was instantly and thankfully agreed to by the votes of all present]. The building proceeded apace, but there is no doubt that the name of the benefactor became known, for on December 22, 1652, and before it was completed, the College voted that a statue of Harvey should be placed in their hall which then occupied a site in Amen Corner. It was accordingly erected there with an inscription upon the pedestal which ran:—

GULIELMO HARVEIO
Viro monumentis suis immortali
Hoc insuper Collegium Medicorum Londinense
posuit,
Qui enim sanguini motum
ut et
Animalibus ortum dedit,
Meruit esse
Stator perpetuus.

It represented Harvey in the cap and gown of his degree, and though it perished in the Great Fire of London in 1666, it was not replaced when the College was rebuilt on or near its old site nor in the more recent building in Pall Mall.

Harvey’s building was a noble example of Roman architecture (of rustic work with Corinthian pilasters). It stood close to the site now occupied by Stationers’ Hall, and consisted of two stories, a great parlour with a kind of convocation house for the Fellows to meet in below and a library above. This inscription was engraved upon the frieze outside the building in letters three inches long: “Suasu et cura Fran. Prujeani, Praesidis et Edmundi Smith, elect: inchoata et perfecta est haec fabrica An. Mdcliii” (This building was begun and finished in the year 1653, at the suggestion and under the eye of Francis Prujean, the President, and Edmund Smith, an Elect). Harvey therefore with characteristic modesty refrained from taking any share in the praise; perhaps he was wise. The building is destroyed and forgotten, Smith’s name has perished, Prujean’s is only remembered as that of a square in the Old Bailey, but Harvey’s memory remains and needs neither bricks and mortar, nor pictures, nor a statue to perpetuate it.

Harvey not only paid for the building but he furnished its library with books, amongst which were treatises on geometry, geography, astronomy, music, optics, natural history, and travels, in addition to those upon medical subjects. It was to be open on Fridays from two till five o’clock in summer, but only till four in winter; during all meetings of the College and whenever the librarian, being at leisure, should choose to be present; but no books were allowed to be taken out. The Museum contained numerous objects of curiosity and a variety of surgical instruments. The doors of the buildings were formally opened on February 2, 1653, when Harvey received the President and the Fellows at a sumptuous entertainment, and afterwards addressed a speech to them in which he made over to the College the title-deeds and his whole interest in the structure and its contents.

The College gave a fresh proof of its gratitude by choosing Harvey unanimously as its President when Dr. Prujean’s term of office came to an end on Michaelmas Day, 1654. As he was absent when the election took place, the Comitia was prorogued until the next day, and Dr. Alston and Dr. Hamey, two of the Elects, were asked to wait upon him to tell him of the honour his colleagues had done themselves and him, and to say that they awaited his answer.

Every act of Harvey’s public life that has come down to us is marked, as Dr. Willis very properly observes, not merely by propriety, but by grace. He attended the Comitia or assembly of the College next day, thanked his colleagues for the distinguished honour of which they had thought him worthy—the honour, as he said, of filling the foremost place amongst the physicians of England; but the concerns of the College, he proceeded, were too weighty to be entrusted to one who, like himself, was laden with years and infirm in health; and if he might be acquitted of arrogance in presuming to offer advice in such circumstances, he would say that the College could not do better than reinstate in the authority which he had just laid down their late President, Dr. Prujean, under whose prudent management and fostering care the affairs of the College had greatly prospered. This disinterested counsel had a fitting response, and Harvey’s advice being adopted by general consent, Dr. Prujean was forthwith re-elected President. His first act was to nominate Harvey one of the Consilarii—an honourable office which he did not refuse to accept, and to which he was reappointed in 1655 and 1656.

That Harvey’s complaint of age with its attendant infirmities was no mere figure of speech may be gathered from his letters written about this time. Thus he tells Dr. Horst, the principal physician at Hesse Darmstadt, on the 1st of February, 1654-1655: “I am much pleased to find that in spite of the long time that has passed, and the distance that separates us, you have not yet lost me from your memory, and I could wish that it lay in my power to answer all your inquiries. But indeed my age does not permit me to have this pleasure, for I am not only far stricken in years, but am afflicted with more and more indifferent health.” And writing again to Dr. Horst five months later he says: “Advanced age, which unfits us for the investigation of novel subtleties, and the mind which inclines to repose after the fatigues of lengthened labours, prevent me from mixing myself up with the investigation of these new and difficult questions; so far am I from courting the office of umpire in this dispute [about the digestion and absorption of the food] that I send you the substance of what I had formerly written about it.”

Harvey appears to have devoted much of his time in his later years to a study of general literature, which must always have had many attractions to his cultivated mind—a study which is indeed absolutely necessary as a relaxation to one whose mind is bent upon the solution of obscure scientific problems if he desires to make his results intelligible. Writing to Nardi on the 30th of November, 1653, to thank him for a commentary on Lucretius’ account of the plague, he goes on to say, “Nor need you plead in excuse your advanced life. I myself, though verging on my eightieth year and sorely failed in bodily health, nevertheless feel my mind still vigorous, so that I continue to give myself up to studies of this kind, especially connected with the sacred things of Apollo, for I do indeed rejoice to see learned men everywhere illustrating the republic of letters.” It would seem too as if he had gained some reputation as a judge of general literature, for Howell in his familiar letters writes to him:—

As a rule it is almost impossible to fix the dates of the “Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ,” but the first part of “Dodona’s Grove” was issued in 1640, and the second part in 1650, so that the letter was probably written in 1651. Even if the letters were never really sent to those to whom they are addressed, Howell selected his apparent correspondents with such care that he would not have addressed Harvey in this manner unless he had been credited with some skill as a critic of general literature. This, too, is borne out in another letter to Nardi on October 25, 1655, in which he says that he is used to solace his declining years and to refresh his understanding, jaded with the trifles of everyday life, by reading the best works. Shortly before he died he was engaged in reading Oughtred’s “Clavis Mathematica,” and in working out the problems. The book was no doubt brought under his notice by Charles Scarborough, who with Seth Ward was the first to read it with his pupils at Cambridge, where it long remained a favourite textbook. When Scarborough and Ward were young, they once made a journey to see Oughtred, an old Etonian, “who was then living at Albury, in Surrey, to be informed of many things in his ‘Clavis Mathematica,’ which seemed at that time very obscure to them. Mr. Oughtred treated them with great humanity, being very much pleased to see such ingenious young men,” says Anthony Wood, who tells the story, “apply themselves to those studies, and in a short time he sent them away well satisfied in their desires.”

Harvey still retained his Lumleian lectureship, the duties of which he conscientiously discharged to the last. His life, says Dr. Munk, already prolonged beyond the span allotted to man, and his waning powers yet further broken by repeated and severe attacks of illness, warned him of his approaching end. He had lived to see his grand discovery of the circulation of the blood universally accepted and inculcated as a canon in most of the medical schools of Europe; and he is said by Hobbes to have been “the only one that conquered envy in his lifetime and saw his new doctrine everywhere established.” Harvey now prepared for the great change awaiting him, and on July 28, 1656, resigned his lectureship, took his leave of the College, and in so doing manifested the same zeal for its prosperity as had marked the whole of his former life. On this occasion he put the crowning act to his munificence by giving to the College in perpetuity his patrimonial estate at Burmarsh in Kent, then valued at £56 a year. The particular purposes of this donation were the institution of an annual feast, at which a Latin oration should be spoken in commemoration of the benefactors of the College, a gratuity for the orator, and a provision for the keeper of his library and museum. All this attention to perpetuate a spirit of concord and social friendship among his brethren, was in full accordance with Harvey’s benevolent and liberal sentiments.

The last of his letters which has been preserved is addressed to John Vlackveld, physician at Haarlem, who had sent him an interesting specimen. The letter is a characteristic one. It runs:—

CHAPTER VII
Harvey’s Death, Burial, and Eulogy

Harvey died at Roehampton in the house of his brother Eliab on the 3rd of June, 1657. Aubrey says that on the morning of his death, about ten o’clock, he went to speak and found that he had the dead palsy in his tongue; then he saw what was to become of him. He knew there were then no hopes of his recovery, so presently he sends for his young nephews to come up to him, to whom he gives one the minute watch with which he had made his experiments, to another his signet ring, and to another some other remembrance. He then made signs (for being seized with the dead palsy in his tongue he could not speak) to Sambroke, his apothecary in Blackfriars, to let him blood in the tongue, which did him little or no good, and so ended his days, dying in the evening of the day on which he was stricken, the palsy giving him an easy passport.

It would appear from this account that Harvey died of a cerebral hemorrhage from vessels long injured by gout and situated rather at the base or internal parts of the brain than in the frontal lobes. Most probably the left Sylvian artery gave way, leading at first to a slight extravasation of blood, which rapidly increased in quantity until it overwhelmed his brain. The copy of the death mask in the church at Hempstead shows the left eye more widely open than the right, whilst the furrows on the right side of the face are much more marked than those on the left side.

The body was brought to London, where it seems to have been placed in Cockaine House, which also belonged to Eliab Harvey, and in that room of the house which became afterwards the office of Elias Ashmole, the antiquary to whom Oxford owes the Ashmolean Museum. Here it rested many days because, though Harvey died on the 3rd of June, it was not until the 25th of June that the Fellows of the College of Physicians received a notice requesting them, clothed in their gowns, to attend the funeral on the following day. In the meantime, Eliab, as his brother’s executor, had decided that Harvey should be buried at Hempstead in Essex, and accordingly, on the 26th of June, 1657, the funeral procession started from London. It was followed far beyond the City walls by a large number of the Fellows of the College of Physicians, many of whom must afterwards have hurried back to Westminster Hall, where, on the same day, with the greatest ceremony and with all the pomp of circumstance, Cromwell was a second time inaugurated after the humble petition and advice had given him the power of nominating his successors and of forming a second House of Parliament, whilst it assigned to him a perpetual revenue.

There is no record of the time when the funeral party reached Hempstead, nor where it stopped on the way. The village is situated about fifty miles from London and seven miles east of Saffron Walden, so that one, if not two, nights must have been spent upon the journey. Here, about 1655, Eliab Harvey had built “the Harvey Chapel,” a plain, rectangular building of brick with a high-pitched tile roof, on the north side of the church, adjoining and communicating with the chancel and lighted by three large windows. He had also built the outer vault beneath it as a place of sepulture for his family, and when this became full in 1766, one of his descendants, also an Eliab Harvey, but of Claybury, built the inner vault. Twice before had Eliab made a similar journey. Once in 1655, after the death of his daughter Sarah, a girl of twelve, and again in 1656, at the funeral of Elizabeth, another daughter aged nine. Harvey was laid in the outer chapel, between the bodies of his two nieces, and like them he was “lapt in lead,” coffinless, and upon his breast was placed in great letters—

DOCTOR
WILLIAM + HARVEY +
DECEASED + THE + 3 +
OF + JUNE + 1657 +
AGED + 79 + YEARS.

“I was at the funeral,” says Aubrey, “and helped to carry him into the vault.” The simple wrapping of the body in lead seems to have been a custom peculiar to the Harvey family. The leaden case used for William Harvey was roughly shaped to the form of the body, the head part having the rude outline of a face with mouth, nose, and eyes; the neck wide and the shoulders expanded. The breastplate was broad and the inscription upon it was in raised letters. The body of the case was long and tapering towards the feet, where the lead was turned up at a right angle. The measurements of the case show that it afforded no data as to Harvey’s size, for though he was a man “of the lowest stature,” its extreme length from the crown of the head to the toes was no less than six feet and a quarter.

When the late Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson first entered the vault in 1847, the remains of Harvey had not been visited within the memory of man, though the villagers knew by tradition that “Dr. Harvey was a very great man, who had made, they were told, some great discovery, though they did not know what it was.” At that time the vault was practically open to the public, for the window in it at the eastern end was uncased and badly barred. The leaden shell containing Harvey’s remains lay upon the floor just beneath the window and with the feet directed towards it. It was therefore exposed to the drift of rain when it beat into the vault with an east wind, and the sarcophagus was so unprotected that boys could throw stones upon it, and did so. The lead in the upper third of its length from the feet was almost torn through on its upper surface, though the rent was only a small one. The leaden case, too, was beginning to bend in over the middle of the body like a large scoop or spoon, in which water could accumulate.

Some repairs were made in the vault after it had been visited and its condition had been reported upon by Dr. Stewart and (Sir) Richard Quain in 1868, but the leaden case still remained upon the floor and the opening had become so large that a frog jumped out of it on one occasion as soon as it was touched. Ten years later Sir Benjamin Richardson made a further examination of the case and reported that the centre of the shell, extending from the middle of the trunk to the feet had so far collapsed that the upper surface all but touched the lower one, whilst the crack in the lead was now so large that it measured fully six inches in length. But owing to the greater collapse of the lead the fissure was not so wide as it was in 1868; indeed, the edges had now closed, leaving only a space of half an inch at the widest part.

“The question which interests us most,” says Richardson, “has yet to be considered. Are any remains of Harvey left in the sarcophagus? Expecting to find the opening in the lead in the same condition at my latest visit, as it was at the latest but one, I took with me a small mirror, a magnesium light, and every appliance for making what may be called a sarcophoscopic investigation. To my dismay, I discovered that the opening is now almost closed by the collapse of the lead, so that the reflector could not be used, while the shell is positively filled at the opening with thick, dirty fluid, like mud—a fluid thick as melted pitch and having a peculiar organic odour. This extends into the case above and below the crack or fissure. There can be little remaining of the body, not much probably even of the skeleton.”

Sir Benjamin concluded his report with the suggestion that “these honoured remains should be conveyed to their one fit and final resting-place—Westminster Abbey. There, laid two feet deep in the floor in some quiet corner and covered merely with a thick glass plate, the leaden sarcophagus, still visible to those who take an interest in the history of science, would be protected for ages, instead of being destined, as it now certainly is, to fall into a mere crumbling, unrecognisable mass, in the course, at furthest, of another hundred years.” The failing health and subsequent death of Dr. Stanley, the Dean of Westminster, prevented the execution of this project, which would probably have been carried into effect had he lived, for it is thought that he was willing to allow the remains of Harvey to be placed near those of Hunter or Livingstone.

On the 28th of January, 1882, the whole tower of Hempstead Church fell towards the south-west into the churchyard. No injury was done to the Harvey Chapel, but the accident led to a further examination of Harvey’s shell. It was found that the lead was perishing rapidly, and that the shell itself was full of water. A formal report was made to the College of Physicians, who appointed a committee of its Fellows to advise upon the best method of procedure. The labours of the Committee resulted in a decision to leave the remains at Hempstead, but to remove them to the chapel above the vault. The necessary consent having been obtained, and a marble sarcophagus to receive the leaden case having been selected, an architect was invited to examine the vault and the floor of the chapel. Under his directions pillars were built in the vault to sustain the additional weight upon the floor of the chapel, and on St. Luke’s Day, 1883, the leaden case containing Harvey’s remains was carried reverently from the vault by eight Fellows of the College. It was immediately deposited in the sarcophagus in the presence of the President, the Office Bearers, and many Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians. A leaden case was also deposited within the sarcophagus containing the quarto edition of Harvey’s works in Latin, edited in 1766 by Drs. Akenside and Lawrence, with a memorial bottle hermetically sealed and containing a scroll with the following memorial:

High in the wall of the Church at Hempstead is a marble monument containing a bust of William Harvey. The ornamentation of the tablet is bold and effective, and below the bust is a long Latin inscription testifying to Harvey’s good works. The bust was carefully examined by Mr. Thomas Woolner, R.A., who came to the conclusion that it was made from a death mask. He says that “the features presented by the bust are clearly those of a dead face. The sculptor exhibits no knowledge of sculpture except when he was copying what was directly before him. With the cast of the face for his copy he has shown true artistic delineation, but all that he has been obliged to add to make up the bust as it stands is of the worst possible quality. The ears are placed entirely out of position, the large, redundant head of hair is altogether out of character, imaginary and badly executed, and the drapery of the shoulders is simply despicable.” We have nevertheless to thank the rude sculptor for the care he has devoted to the face, and we are enriched by the knowledge supplied to us by a great contemporary authority in sculpture, that the true lineaments of William Harvey, as they were seen at the time of his death, are still in our possession—lineaments which indicate a face at once refined, reflective, and commanding.

Harvey’s will is an interesting document. It is without date, but it seems to have been made at some time between July, 1651, and February, 1653. The codicil is also undated. Perhaps it was added shortly before Sunday, the 28th of December, 1656, the day on which Harvey read over the whole document and formally declared and published it as his last will and testament in the presence of Heneage Finch, his nephew by marriage, afterwards the Lord Chancellor, and his faithful servant, John Raby. The will runs:

The entry of the issue of probate upon this will runs thus in the books at Somerset House:—

“May 1659. The second day was proved the will and Codicil annext of Dr. William Harvey, late of the parish of St. Peter’s Poore, in London, but at Roehampton in the County of Surrey, deceased, by the oath of Eliab Harvey, the brother and sole executor, to whom administration was committed, he being first sworn truly to administer.” This entry seems to set at rest the doubt that had been expressed as to the exact place of Harvey’s death, for Aubrey with his customary inaccuracy in detail stated that he died in London.

William Harvey may perhaps be compared more fitly with John Hunter than with any single scientific man who either preceded or followed him. Harvey laid the foundation of modern medicine by his discovery of the circulation of the blood. Hunter laid the foundation of modern pathology, not by any single and striking discovery, but by a long course of careful observation. Harvey, like Hunter, was a careful and competent observer; both were skilled anatomists, both were ardent pathologists, both were comparative anatomists of a high order. By singular ill fortune we have lost the records of many years of careful work done by each of these great men. Harvey’s work was destroyed or scattered by the violence of the times in which he lived, and we can only be grateful that so much is spared to us; Hunter’s work was lost irrevocably by the crime of his trusted assistant and brother-in-law. Harvey, like Hunter, was choleric, but his nature was the more lovable, though each had the power, innate in every great teacher, of attaching to himself and enrolling in his work all sorts of unlikely people. The collecting or acquisitive spirit was equally developed both in Hunter and Harvey, but the desire for knowledge was less insatiable in Harvey.

The influence of breeding and education is nowhere more marked than in these two great men, otherwise so nearly allied. Harvey’s knowledge is always well within the grasp of his intellect. He can formulate it, often in exquisite language, and it is so familiar to him that he can afford to use similes and images which show him to be a man of wide general education. He thinks clearly so that his unerring conclusions are drawn in a startlingly easy manner. Yet he was often hampered by the theories of the ancient philosophical schools of medicine. Hunter’s knowledge was gigantic, but it was uncontrolled. His thoughts are obscure and so ill expressed that it is often difficult to discover what he would say. His conclusions too are sometimes incorrect and are frequently laboured, yet the advance of knowledge in the hundred years and more which separated him from Harvey afforded him many additional data.

Harvey’s acquaintance with the literature of medicine enabled him to cite apposite examples, and must evidently have been of the greatest service to him in elucidating his problems. Hunter too often traversed paths which were already well trodden, for his defective education prevented him from knowing the works of his predecessors. The atmosphere of Courts and of the refined and learned society in which Harvey spent most of his life has given a polish to his writings and a gentleness to his character which were wholly wanting to John Hunter, upon whom the res angustae domi—absent in Harvey’s case—had impressed a certain ruggedness of character, but in both there was a native strength and robustness of constitution which render them not dissimilar.

As mere practitioners or curers of the body neither Harvey nor Hunter were highly esteemed by their contemporaries, though both made considerable sums of money by their art. The curiosity both of Harvey and of Hunter was boundless, but their minds were of the creative rather than of the imaginative type. Both collected facts and were averse to theories.

Neither Hunter nor Harvey were religious men in the ordinary and narrow sense of the term. Harvey, living at an intensely religious period in the history of England, appears to have held the broad views befitting a student of nature. An eminently religious tone runs throughout his work, “a devout and reverential recognition of God,” as Sir Russell Reynolds expressed it, “not only as the great primal ever-acting force, behind, outside and before all the works of Nature; but as the Being, ‘the Almighty and Eternal God,’ to whom he says in his last will and testament, ‘I do most humbly render my soul to Him who gave it; and to my blessed Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.’” Hunter living in a freer age had yet the remains of his Scottish upbringing adherent to the last.

CHAPTER VIII
Harvey’s Anatomical Works

Harvey’s liber aureus is certainly his “Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus.” [An Anatomical Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey, the Englishman, Physician to the King and Professor of Anatomy in the London College of Physicians.] The work was issued from the press of William Fitzer, of Frankfort, in the year 1621. Harvey chose Frankfort as the place of publication for his book because the annual book fair held in the town enabled a knowledge of his work to be more rapidly spread than if it had been issued in England.

The book contains the matured account of the circulation of the blood, of which somewhat more than the germ had appeared in the notes of the Lumleian visceral lecture for 1616. It is a small quarto, containing seventy-two pages and a page and half of errata, for Harvey wrote a villainous hand, and communication between Germany and England was too slow, expensive, and uncertain to allow an author to correct his book sheet by sheet as it issued from the press.

The Treatise opens with a dedication to Charles I. couched in fitting emblematical language, and signed “Your Most August Majesty’s Most Devoted Servant, William Harvey.” The dedication is followed by a preface addressed to “Dr. Argent [then President of the College of Physicians, and one of Harvey’s intimate friends] as well as to the other learned physicians, his most esteemed colleagues.” In this preface he excuses himself for the book, saying that he had already and repeatedly presented to them his new views of the movement and function of the heart in his anatomical lectures. And that he had now for nine years and more confirmed these views by multiplied demonstrations in their presence. He had illustrated them by arguments and he had freed them from objections of the most learned and skilful Anatomists. He then proceeds so modestly that it is difficult to realise how great an innovation he was really making when he says, “I profess both to learn and to teach anatomy, not from books but from dissections, not from the positions of philosophers but from the fabric of nature.”

Such a statement is now a mere truism, because every one who starts upon a subject of original research follows the method adopted by Harvey. He learns thoroughly what is known already; he frames a working hypothesis and puts it to the test of experiment. He then combines his à priori reasoning with a logical deduction from the facts he observes. A feeble mind is sometimes overmastered by its working hypothesis, and may be led to consider it proved when a better trained observer would dismiss it for a more promising theory. Harvey’s hypothesis—tested by experiment, by observation, and by reasoning—was no longer an hypothesis but a proved fact fertile beyond measure, for it rendered possible a coherent and experimental physiology and a new medicine and surgery.

The anatomical treatise gives in seventeen short chapters a perfectly clear and connected account of the action of the heart and of the movement of the blood round the body in a circle. A movement which had been foreshadowed by some of the earlier anatomists and had been clearly indicated by Harvey himself as early as 1616. But it is here laid down with a precision of detail, with a logical exactness, and with a wealth of illustration which is marvellous even to us who read of the circulation as an established and fundamental principle upon which the whole body of physic rests. Harvey’s proof fell short of complete demonstration, for he had no means of showing how the smallest arteries are connected with the smallest veins. He worked, indeed, with a simple lens, but its magnifying power was too feeble to show him the arterioles and the venules, whilst the idea of an injection does not seem to have occurred to him. It was not until after the invention of the compound microscope that Leeuwenhoek, in 1675, described the blood corpuscles and the circulation in the capillary blood vessels, though they had already been seen by Malpighi.

The first chapter of the Treatise is introductory. It is a review of the chief theories which had been held as to the uses of the heart and lungs. It had been maintained that the heart was the great centre for the production of heat. The blood was driven alternately to and from the heart, being sucked into it during the diastole and driven from it during the systole. The use of the arteries was to fan and cool the blood, as the lungs fanned and cooled the heart, for the pulse was due to an active dilatation and contraction of the arteries. During their dilatation the arteries sucked in air, and during their contraction they discharged murky vapours through pores in the flesh and skin. In the heart, as well as in the arteries, the dilatation was of greater importance than the contraction. The whole of this tissue of falsehood seems to have been founded upon an incorrect apprehension of the nature of heat. It was looked upon as a fundamental principle or entity, and until chemistry and physics reached the stage of experimental sciences it was impossible to give a correct explanation of the phenomena it presents. Even Harvey sometimes lost himself in mysticism when he had to deal with the subject of animal heat, though he was struggling hard to find a firm foothold when he said, “We are too much in the habit of worshipping names to the neglect of things. The word Blood has nothing of grandiloquence about it, for it signifies a substance which we have before our eyes and can touch; but before such titles as Spirit and Calidum Innatum [or inherent heat] we stand agape.”

Harvey begins his Treatise on the movement of the Heart and Blood with the clear statement that the heart must be examined whilst it is alive; but he says, “I found the task so truly arduous and so full of difficulties that I was almost tempted to think with Fracastorius that the movement of the heart was only to be comprehended by God. For I could neither rightly perceive at first when the systole[10] and when the diastole took place, nor when and where dilatation and contraction occurred, by reason of the rapidity of the movement, which in many animals is accomplished in the twinkling of an eye, coming and going like a flash of lightning.

“At length by using greater and daily diligence and investigation, making frequent inspection of many and various animals and collating numerous observations, I thought that I had attained to the truth ... and that I had discovered what I so much desired—both the movement and the use of the heart and arteries. From that time I have not hesitated to expose my views upon these subjects, not only in private to my friends, but also in public in my anatomical lectures, after the manner of the Academy of old.

“These views, as usual, pleased some more, others less: some chid and calumniated me and laid it to me as a crime that I had dared to depart from the precepts and opinion of all anatomists: others desired further explanations of the novelties, which they said were both worthy of consideration, and might perchance be found of signal use.”

The results of his experiments soon made it plain to Harvey that the heart’s movements could be studied more readily in the colder animals, such as toads, frogs, serpents, small fishes, crabs, shrimps, snails, and shell-fish, than in warm-blooded animals. The movements of the heart became more distinct even in warm-blooded animals, such as the dog and hog, if the organ was attentively noted when it began to flag. The movements then became slower, the pauses longer, so that it was then much more easy to perceive and unravel what the movements really were and how often they were performed.

Careful observation and handling the heart made it clear that the organ was muscular, and that its systole was in every way comparable with the contraction which occurs in the muscles of the forearm when the fingers are moved. “The contraction of the heart is therefore of greater importance than its relaxation. During its contraction the heart becomes erect, hard, and diminished in size, so that the ventricles become smaller and are so made more apt to expel their charge of blood. Indeed, if the ventricle be pierced the blood will be projected forcibly outwards at each pulsation when the heart is tense.”

After thus disproving the erroneous views of the heart’s action, Harvey next proceeds to discuss the movements in the arteries as they are seen in the dissection of living animals. He shows that the pulsation of the arteries depends directly upon the contraction of the left ventricle and is due to it, whilst the contraction of the right ventricle propels its charge of blood into the pulmonary artery which is distended simultaneously with the other arteries of the body. When an artery is divided or punctured the blood is forcibly expelled from the wound at the instant when the left ventricle contracts, and when the pulmonary artery is wounded the blood spurts forth with violence when the right ventricle contracts. So also in fish, if the vessel leading from the heart to the gills be divided the blood flows out forcibly when the heart becomes tense and contracted.

These facts enabled Harvey to disprove the current theory that the heart’s systole corresponded with the contraction of the arteries which then became filled with blood by a process of active dilatation, as bellows are filled with air. He illustrated this by a homely method which he had been accustomed to use in his lectures for years. He says that “the pulses of the arteries are due to the impulses of the blood from the left ventricle may be illustrated by blowing into a glove, when the whole of the fingers will be found to become distended at one and the same time and in their tension to bear some resemblance to the pulse.”

The broad points in connection with the vascular system being thus settled, Harvey turned his attention more particularly to the mechanism of the heart’s action. He shows that the two auricles move synchronously and that the two ventricles also contract at the same time. Hitherto it had been supposed that each cavity of the heart moved independently, so that every cardiac cycle consisted of four distinct movements. To prove that the movement of the heart was double he examined the eel, several fish, and some of the higher animals. He noticed that the ventricles would pulsate without the auricles, and that if the heart were cut into several pieces “the several parts may still be seen contracting and relaxing.” The minute accuracy of Harvey’s observation is shown by his record of what is in reality a perfusion experiment. He says: “Experimenting with a pigeon upon one occasion after the heart had wholly ceased to pulsate and the auricles too had become motionless, I kept my finger wetted with saliva and warm for a short time upon the heart and noticed that under the influence of this fomentation it recovered new strength and life, so that both ventricles and auricles pulsated, contracting and relaxing alternately, recalled as it were from death to life.” We now know that this was due to the warmth, to the moisture, and to the alkalinity of Harvey’s saliva, so that he performed crudely, and no doubt by accident, one of the most modern experiments to show that the heart, under suitable conditions, has the power of recovering from fatigue.

This portion of the treatise affords an insight into the enormous amount of labour which Harvey had expended in its production, for he says: “I have also observed that nearly all animals have truly a heart, not the larger creatures only and those that have red blood, but the smaller and pale-blooded ones also, such as slugs, snails, scallops, shrimps, crabs, crayfish, and many others; nay, even in wasps, hornets, and flies I have, with the aid of a magnifying glass and at the upper part of what is called the tail, both seen the heart pulsating and shown it to many others.” That this was the result of a careful study of the animals mentioned and not a simple observation is shown by the following sentences: “In winter and the colder season, pale-blooded animals such as the snail show no pulsations: they seem rather to live after the manner of vegetables or of those other productions which are therefore designated plant animals.... We have a small shrimp in these countries, which is taken in the Thames and in the sea, the whole of whose body is transparent: this creature, placed in a little water, has frequently afforded myself and particular friends an opportunity of observing the movements of the heart with the greatest distinctness, the external parts of the body presenting no obstacle to our view, but the heart being perceived as though it had been seen through a window.

“I have also observed the first rudiments of the chick in the course of the fourth or fifth day of the incubation, in the guise of a little cloud, the shell having been removed and the egg immersed in clear, tepid water. In the midst of the cloudlet in question there was a bloody point so small that it disappeared during the contraction and escaped the sight, but in the relaxation it reappeared again red and like the point of a pin.”

Harvey formulates in his fifth chapter the conclusions to which he had been led about the movement, action, and use of the heart. His results appear to be absolutely correct by the light of our present knowledge, and they show how much can be done by a careful observer, even though he be unassisted by any instrument of precision.

“First of all the auricle contracts, and in the course of its contraction forces the blood (which it contains in ample quantity as the head of the veins, the storehouse and cistern of the blood) into the ventricle which, being filled, the heart raises itself straightway, makes all its fibres tense, contracts the ventricles and performs a beat, by which beat it immediately sends the blood supplied to it by the auricle into the arteries. The right ventricle sends its charge into the lungs by the vessel which is called the vena arteriosa [pulmonary artery], but which in structure and function and all other respects is an artery. The left ventricle sends its charge into the aorta and through this by the arteries to the body at large.

“These two movements, one of the ventricles, the other of the auricles, take place consecutively, but in such a manner that there is a kind of harmony or rhythm preserved between them, the two concurring in such wise that but one movement is apparent, especially in the warmer blooded animals in which the movements in question are rapid. Nor is this for any other reason than it is in a piece of machinery in which, though one wheel gives movement to another, yet all the wheels seem to move simultaneously; or in that mechanical contrivance which is adapted to firearms, where the trigger being touched, down comes the flint, strikes against the wheel, produces a spark, which falling among the powder, ignites it, upon which the flame extends, enters the barrel, causes the explosion, propels the ball, and the mark is attained—all of which incidents by reason of the celerity with which they happen, seem to take place in the twinkling of an eye.... Even so does it come to pass with the movements and action of the heart.... Whether or not the heart besides propelling the blood, giving it movement locally and distributing it to the body, adds anything else to it—heat, spirit, perfection—must be inquired into by and by, and decided upon other grounds. So much may suffice at this time, when it is shown that by the action of the heart the blood is transfused through the ventricles from the veins to the arteries and is distributed by them to all parts of the body.

“The above indeed is admitted by all, both from the structure of the heart and the arrangement and action of its valves. But still they are like persons, purblind or groping in the dark, for they give utterance to various contradictory and incoherent sentiments, delivering many things upon conjecture.... The great cause of doubt and error in this subject appears to me to have been the intimate connection between the heart and the lungs. When men saw both the pulmonary artery and the pulmonary veins losing themselves in the lungs, of course it became a puzzle to them to know how or by what means the right ventricle should distribute the blood to the body or the left draw it from the venae cavae....

“Since the intimate connection of the heart with the lungs, which is apparent in the human subject, has been the probable cause of the errors that have been committed on this point, they plainly do amiss who, pretending to speak of the parts of animals generally, as Anatomists for the most part do, confine their researches to the human body alone, and that when it is dead. They obviously do not act otherwise than he who, having studied the forms of a single commonwealth, should set about the composition of a general system of polity: or who, having taken cognisance of the nature of a single field, should imagine that he had mastered the science of agriculture; or who, upon the ground of one particular proposition, should proceed to draw general conclusions.

“Had Anatomists only been as conversant with the dissection of the lower animals as they are with that of the human body, the matters that have hitherto kept them in a perplexity of doubt would, in my opinion, have met them freed from every kind of difficulty.”

After this plea for the employment of comparative anatomy to elucidate human anatomy, Harvey proceeds to deal in a most logical manner with the various difficulties in following the course taken by the blood in passing from the vena cava to the arteries, or from the right to the left side of the heart. He begins with fish, in which the heart consists of a single ventricle, for there are no lungs. He then discusses the relationship of the parts in the embryo, and arrives at the conclusion that “in embryos, whilst the lungs are in a state of inaction, performing no function, subject to no movement any more than if they had not been present, Nature uses the two ventricles of the heart as if they formed but one for the transmission of the blood.” He therefore concludes that the condition of the embryos of those animals which have lungs, whilst these organs are yet in abeyance or not employed, is the same as that of the animals which have no lungs. From this he wishes it to be understood that the blood passes by obvious and open passages from the vena cava into the aorta through the cavities of the ventricles. A statement which was in direct opposition to the generally received tradition of the time that the blood passed from the right into the left ventricle by concealed pores in the septum which separates the two cavities in the heart.

Thus far Harvey’s teaching has been excellent, but now, leaving the highway of fact, he plunges into theory and is at once involved in error. He proceeds, “And now the discussion is brought to this point, that they who inquire into the ways by which the blood reaches the left ventricle of the heart and pulmonary veins from the vena cava will pursue the wisest course if they seek by dissection to discover why, in the larger and more perfect animals of mature age, Nature has rather chosen to make the blood percolate the parenchyma of the lungs, than as in other instances chosen a direct and obvious course—for I assume no other path or mode of transit can be entertained. It must be because the larger and more perfect animals are warmer, and when adult their heat greater, ignited I might say, and requiring to be damped or mitigated, that the blood is sent through the lungs, in order that it may be tempered by the air that is inspired, and prevented from boiling up and so becoming extinguished or something else of the sort. But to determine these matters and explain them satisfactorily were to enter upon a speculation in regard to the office of the lungs and the ends for which they exist. Upon such a subject, as well as upon what pertains to respiration, to the necessity and use of the air, &c., as also to the variety and diversity of organs that exist in the bodies of animals in connection with these matters, although I have made a vast number of observations, I shall not speak till I can more conveniently set them forth in a treatise apart.”