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V
II',
DATE DUE
04365-
REC1,
A.
DISCOVERY
OF THE
BY P. FLOURENS;
Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of Sciences, (Institute of France ;)
Member of the Royal Societies and Academies of Science of Lon-
don, Edinburgh, Stockholm, Munich, Turin, Madrid,
Brussels, etc., etc. Professor at the Muse-
um of Natural History of Paris.
Etant sur les banes, il fit une action d'une audace signal^e, qui ne pouvait
gufere, en ce temps-la, etre entreprise que par un jeune homme, ni justifies
que par un grand succ&s; il soutint dans une thfese la circulation du sang.
Les vieux clocteurs trouv^rent qu'il avait defendu avec esprit cet Strange
paradoxe. FONTENJCLLE, Eloge de Fagon.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH,
BY J. C. REEVE, 'M . D
CINCINNATI :
RICKEY, MALLORY & COMPANY.
1859.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
A desire for information in regard to the history
of a science, as naturally follows its study as does
the wish to know something of the countries through
which we travel, or of the biography of authors
whose works have instructed or amused us. To
medical men the satisfaction of this desire is attend-
ed with something more than the mere gratification
of curiosity ; lessons of great practical value are
to be derived from the study of the history of med-
icine. As we observe the slow and uncertain man-
ner in which our present knowledge has been at-
tained, we shall feel that our progress is likely
also to be gradual, and that the great discoveries
of the future are to be made, like those of the past,
by patient and long continued observation, judicious
experiment and careful generalization. As we see
the doctrines of great teachers, which were received
by their followers as infallible, shown one after the
other to be erroneous, we may learn caution in
regard to resting our efforts with the present attain-
ments of science. For these and many other rea-
sons the study of the history of medicine is valua-
ble to the practitioner, and has always been re-
commended to the student, by those best qualified
to judge, as an important part of his professional
education.
iv TRANSLATOR'S .PREFACE.
There are, however, few hooks upon medical his-
tory accessible to readers in this country. The
voluminous work of Sprengel has never been trans-
lated into the English language. The excellent
History of the Inductive Sciences by Whewell is but
partially occupied with medical subjects, and, until
the appearance of Prof. Comegys' translation of
Renouard's History of Medicine, the profession has
been limited to the brief sketch upon this subject
by Dr. Bostock in the Cyclopedia of Practical
Medicine.
From the condensed form necessary, when so
wide a subject as the history of medicine is con-
sidered within the limits of an essay or even of a
single volume, the discovery of the circulation of
the blood does not receive that attention which it
merits, either in the article by Dr. Bostock or in
the work of Renouard. This discovery may be
said without exaggeration, to be one of the most
important events in the history of medical science ;
some of the greatest minds ever in the profession
took part in it ; it exerted an important influence
upon the treatment of disease, it marked a new
era in the history of medicine, and effected a revolu-
tion in scientific research. All who reflect upon
these facts will be convinced that it deserves a
separate treatise.
This little work of M. Flourens has been trans-
lated and is now presented to the profession of
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. v
this country in hopes that it may help to supply
information upon a most important part of medi-
cal history. If after availing himself of the lite-
rary resources of the French capital, the author
found the history of this discovery imperfect, it is
surely unnecessary to apologize for offering in this
country the result of his efforts to complete it.
The faithfulness and ability with which he has per-
formed his task are guaranteed hy his attainments
and his position ; as a scientific man and as an
eminent medical writer, he has so long been known
to the world, as to render any introduction here
superfluous.
Dayton, Ohio, May, 1859.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
Some years ago, while looking over Ramazzini's
Commentaire upon Cornaro, my attention was ar-
rested by the folloAving paragraph :
" The ancients were entirely ignorant of the
circulation of the blood, and we are indebted to
Harvey, the English Democritus, for making it
known, after having derived it from those two
excellent sources, Fabricius ab Aquapendente and
Paul Sarpi, both professors at Padua, and who
made so many experiments upon all sorts of
animals."
This paragraph awakened my curiosity ; I made
research ; I found writers partizan, biased, and
prejudiced; of the true historian, the judge, I
could not find a trace. The history of the discov-
ery of the circulation of the blood was yet to be
written.
I study successively in this work all the wonder-
ful discoveries of the circulation of the blood pro-
perly speaking, of the lacteals, of the reservoir of
the chyle, and of the lymphatics. I follow the
facts from Erasistratus and Galen to Servetus, from
Servetus and Caesalpinus to Harvey, from Harvey
to Pecquet and Thomas Bartholin.
VIII AUTHOR S PREFACE.
One point has particularly occupied my atten-
tion, I have applied myself to the investigation,
and, if I may so speak, to the reconstruction of all
the ideas of Galen in regard to the circulation in
the adult and in the foetus, the formation of the
blood and of the spirits, and the origin of animul
heat.
In one chapter are examined the pretensions of
Sarpi to the discovery of the circulation of the
blood, and in another the physiological doctrines
of Servetus, that strange man of genius ! I close
with t two chapters upon Guy-Patin, the most ob-
stinate and at the same time most talented adver-
sary which modern doctrines encountered.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY
CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
I.
HARVEY AND THE CIRCULATION OP THE BLOOD.
THE discovery of the circulation of the blood did
not belong, and could scarcely belong to a single
man, nor indeed to a single age. Many errors
were to be destroyed; in place of these errors
truths were to be established ; and this was accom-
plished slowly, little by little. Galen commenced
the discovery by combatting Erasistratus ; he opened
the route which followed afterward by Vesalius, by
Servetus, by Columbus, by Csesalpinus and by Fa-
bricius ab Aquapendente conducted us to Harvey.
Three principal errors masked, if I may so speak,
the great fact of the circulation of the blood. The
first was, that the arteries contained only air; the
second, that the septum, between the two ventricles
of the heart, was perforated; and the third, that
2
12 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
the veins carried the blood to the extremities in-
stead of bringing it from them.
Let us see with \vhom these errors originated
and who destroyed them.
Erasistratus.
Erasistratus held that the arteries contain air ;
he did not believe that they contain blood.
According to him the air drawn by the lungs
penetrated to them by the trachea (trachee artere}',
from the trachea it passed into the venous artery
(which we now call the pulmonary vein,) from
thence it entered the left ventricle, passed on into
the arteries and was distributed by them to the
system at large. 1
What we now call the sanguineous system, the
circulating system, was then divided into two the
arterial or cerian and the venous or sanguineous
system.
The arteries were serian canals, or channels for
air; hence their name of arteries, and hence their
similarity of name to the trachee artere, which is
the great air-passage of the body.
(1) According to Erasistratus we respire only to fill the
arteries with air. "Quaenam est utilitas respirationis?
Num animae ipsius geueratio est? An innati caloris ven-
tilatio ac refrigeratio ? Aut horem quiclem nihil est,
verum arteriaruin expletionis gratia respiramus, velut Erasis-
tratus putat?'' (De utilitate respirationis, Galeni opera, edition
des Junte. Venise, 1597, p. 223.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 13
Galen.
As soon as an artery is opened, says Galen, the
blood gushes out of it: then one of two things
must be true, it was either contained in the artery
or came into it from elsewhere. But, if the latter,
if the artery contained nothing but air, the air
should come out before the blood, and this does not
take place; blood alone comes out and no air; then
the arteries contain nothing but blood. 1
Galen made another experiment. He placed two
ligatures on an artery a little distance apart; he
opened the canal between them and found nothing
but blocd: once more then, the arteries contain
blood and they contain nothing but blood. 2
But, cried the followers of Erasistratus, if the
arteries contain blood, how can the air which is
drawn in by the lungs pass into all parts of the
(1) Quoniam arteria qtuicumque vulnerata, sanguinem
egredi videmus, duorura alterum sit oportet, vel in arteriis
sanguinem contineri, vel aliunde ipsum in eas confluere.
Quod, si aliunde sanguis in eas confluit, manifestum est uni-
cuique, cum se naturaliter arteriac habebant, spiritum ipsas
solummodo continuisse. Quod, si hoc verum esset, oponebat
in vulneratis, priusquam sanguis egrederetur, spiritum exire
conspiceremus; cum autem hoc fieri non videamus, nee antea
solum spiritum in arteriis contentum fuisse colligemus. (An
sanguis in arteriis natura conlineatur, p. 60.)
(2) Ubi funiculo dissectam arteriam utrinque ligavimus, et
quod in medio comprehensum fuerat incidimus, sanguine ple-
nam ipsam esse monstravimus. (Ibid. p. 61.)
14 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
body? It does not pass there, responded Galen:
the air which is drawn in is rejected again; it
serves for respiration by its temperature and not
by its substance; it cods the blood and that is the
end and aim of respiration. 1
Assuredly this is very far from what we now
know of the respiration. It is even directly con-
trary to what takes place. Instead of cooling the
blood, respiration heats it; respiration is the source
of animal heat; but yet, compared with the doc-
trines of Erasistratus, who held that the air passed
into the arteries in totality, en masse, in substance,
as it passes into the trachea and into the bronchiae,
that it was the air which filled the arteries, which
distended them, 2 and made them beat, that it was
(1) Sed quomodo, reclamant, in totum corpus aer veniet,
quern respirando attrahimus, si sanguineum arteriae contin-
eant ? Quibus respondendum est, quoe necessitas hoc eos
fateri cogat, cum possit totus, qui respirando admissus est aer,
foras esse remitti: quemadmodum pluribus, iisque diligentis-
simis tarn philosophis quam medicis, visum est, qui cor, in-
quiunt, non aeris substantium exposcere, sed frigiditatem
solummodo, qua recreari desiderat: atque hunc esse respira-
tionis usum. (Ibid., p. 62.)
(2) "Consentiens Erasistrati sententinc; quando-
quidem putat arterias ideo distendi, quod compleantur
spiritu (the spirit, that is to say, for Erasistratus, the air; it
will be seen farther on what Galen considered the spirit), a
corde suppeditato." (De pulsuum di/erentiis, p. 69.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 15
the air which caused the pulse, 1 the idea of Galen
was a progress, and such a progress that physio-
logy was not able to advance beyond it until she
called to her aid the resources of modern chem-
istry. Ilaller believed still that respiration cooled
the blood.
Thus then it was established that the arteries do
not contain air ; they contain only blood like the
veins; an entire half of the sanguineous system,
which had been detached by an hypothesis, was
given back to it again; and, as the circulation is
but the unceasing movement of the blood from the
heart into the arteries, and from the arteries into
the veins, and through the veins back again to the
heart, so long as the arteries were supposed to
contain nothing but air the discovery of the circu-
lation was impossible : without the first step which
Galen made it was impossible to make a second.
Of *he three principal errors, then, first men-
tioned, there was one less; one was destroyed.
But Galen was not so happy with the two others.
He still believed that the septum between the two
ventricles was perforated, and that the veins car-
ried the blood to the extremities : two errors which
were destined to pass from him to the moderns, and
the latter of which is opposed to the very idea of
the circulation.
(1) "Pulsus est dilatatio arteriaj, quoe completione fit spi-
ritus a corde emissi." (Ibid.)
16 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
The first modern anatomists.
The septum which separates the two ventricles
is not perforated. How did it happen then that
Galen believed it to be perforated saw it thus?
Because he imagined it necessary that it should
be so!
According to Galen the veins, as well as the
arteries, carried blood to the extremities ; but ac-
cording to him there were two kinds of blood the
spiritual blood, the blood of the arteries and of the
left ventricle, and the venous blood, the blood pro-
perly speaking, the blood of the veins and of the
right side of the heart. 1 And this was another
step in advance. It was the first indication of the
two kinds of blood now so well distinguished, the
red blood and the black blood, the arterial and
the venous blood, the blood which has, and that
which has not been purified by respiration.
There were then, according to Galen, two kinds
of blood; and each kind had a destination peculiar
to itself: the spiritual blood nourished organs of
light and delicate texture, such as the lungs; the
venous blood nourished those heavy and gross, such
as the liver. 2 The spirit, the purest part of the
(1) Sinistro veiitriculo, quern medici spirituosum ap-
pellare consueverunt altero ventriculo, quem sangui-
neum appellant. (De i*su partium, lib. vi, p. 150.)
(2) Ut similem, ad sui nutritionem, postulent sanguinem,
verbi gratia, hepar yiscerum omnium gravissimum ac densis-
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 17
blood, 1 was only formed in the left ventricle; 2 it
being necessary, however, that even the venous
blood should contain a certain proportion of spirit 3
in order to fit it for the purposes of nutrition, it
was also necessary that the two ventricles, the ven-
tricle of the spirit and the ventricle of the blood,
should communicate with each other, and this com-
munication was held to take place by means of
foraminse in the septum which separated them. 4
Galen, therefore, held the septum to be perforated
because he had imagined a system which rendered
a communication between the ventricles necessary.
The early modern anatomists believed the septum
perforated because Galen had said it was so !
simum, et pulmo levissimus ac rarissimus Quo fac-
tum est tit hepar quidem a venis fere soils, pulmo
vero ab arteriis'nutriretur. (Ibid., p. 155.)
(1) Spiritus exhalatio qutedam est sanguinis benigni
(Ibid.)
(2) Spiritus receptaculum, sinister ventriculus (De
anat. administ., lib. vii., p. 95.)
(3) Demonstratum nobis alio loco est, omnia esse in omni-
bus ; atque arterise quidem tenuern ac purum et va-
porosum participant sanguinem, vente autem paucum, eum-
demque caliginosum aerem (De usu partium, lib. vi.,
p. 154.)
(4) Quaj igitur in corde appirent foramina, ad ipsius po-
tissimum medium septum, praedicUe communitatis gratia, ex-
titerunt. (Ibid., p. 155.)
10 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Mondini said the septum was perforated ; J Vas-
seus, or Le Vasseur, to whom I shall refer again,
said the same as Mondini; 2 twenty others made
the same statement. Berengcr de Carpi first
avowed that these openings were only to be seen
with difficulty; 5 and Vesalius, the great Vesalius,
the father of modern anatomy, Vesalius alone dared
say that they did not exist. He did not, however,
arrive at that point directly. lie commenced by
repeating, like all the others, that the hlood passed
from one ventricle to the other through openings
in the septum* But soon, carried away by the
force of the truth which he saw, the fact which he
(1) He calls the septum the middle ventricle: Nam iste
ventriculus non est una concavitas, sed plnres concavilates
parva;, ut sanguis qui vadit ad ventriculum sinistrum
a dextro, cum debeat fieri spiritus, continue subtilletur
(Anatomia Mundini. Ed. of Drjander, 1540, p. 38.)
(2) "Within the heart there are two sinuses or ventricles
separated by a partition, called in Latin septum, through the
openings in which (lie spirit and the blood have communica-
tion." (French translation, ly Canappe, p. 46.)
(3) In homine cum maxima difficultate videntur. (Com-
mentaria super Anat. Mundini, p. 341, ed. 1521.) Sylvius, or
Dubois, also did not seem willing to admit the foramina; of the
septum; at least he does not speak of them; he contents him-
self with saying Sunt cordi ventres duo, carnis ipsius por-
tione media, ceu diaphragmate quodam secret!. (Ed. 1555.)
(4) Maxima portione per ventriculorum cordis septl
poros in sinistrum ventriculum desudare sinit ( Ve-
salii Opera Omnia Anatomica, ed. d'Albinus, 1725, t. i., p. 517.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 19
touched, he declared that he only made that state-
ment in order to accommodate himself to the teach-
ings of Galen; 1 for, in truth, the structure of the
septum is no less solid or compact than the rest of
the heart, and through this dense tissue there can
not pass a single drop of blood. 2
Galen showed that the arteries contain blood as
well as the veins, and this was the first step; he
pointed out the distinction between the two kinds
of blood, the arterial and the venous, and this was
the indication of a second step; Vesalius had just
shown that the partition between the two ventricles
is not perforated and this was the third step; one
step more and the pulmonary circulation was dis-
covered. This step was made by Servetus.
Servetus and the pulmonary circulation.
I shall carefully guard against making any allu-
sion to the theological works of Servetus, which I
(1) In cordis constructions rations, ipsiusque partium
usu recensendis.magmi ex parte Galeni dogmatibus sermonem
accommodavi. (Ibid., p. 519.)
(2) Hand levitur studiosis expendendum est ventriculorum
cordis interstitium, aut septum, ipsumve sinistri ventriculi dex-
trum latus, quod asque crassum, compactumque ac densum est,
atque reliqua cordis pars sinistrum ventriculum coiuplectens,
adeo ut ignorem qui per septi illius substantiam ex
dextro veiitriculo in sinistrum vel minimum quid sanguinis
assumi possit. (Ibid., p. 519.)
20 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
have never read. 1 Perhaps in his quar:els with
Calvin he was as much at fault as his adversary,
but, at least, he did not burn Calvin.
I shall confine myself to the following passage
upon the pulmonary circulation, and I maintain
that this admirable passage alone is sufficient to
give to its author an illustrious place among men
of science.
The communication, says Servetus, (that is to
say, the passage of the blood from the right to
the left ventricle,) does not take place through the
median partition of the ventricles, as is generally
supposed; but by a long and wonderful route the
blood is conducted through the lungs, where it is
agitated and prepared, where it becomes yellow,
and passes from the arterial vein into the venous
artery: et a vend arteriosd in arteriam venosam
transfunditur.
I stop a moment at these words, et a vend arte-
riosd in arteriam venosam transfunditur, for they
express the new arid complete idea.
Even while supposing the inter-ventricular sep-
tum to be perforated Galen knew very well that
the blood of the right ventricle passed, at least in
part, through the pulmonary artery into the lungs. 2
(1) I have had occasion to read some of them since this was
written as will be seen farther on.
(2) Atqui orificia omnia sunt numero quatnor, duo in utro-
que ventriculo: in sinistro unum quod spiritum de pulmone
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 21
Vesalius was also aware of it. 1 But this was only
the half of the truth.
The entire an:l complete idea necessary to estab-
lish the pulmonary circulation was to understand
that the blood pnssed from the pulmonary artery
into the pulmonary veins ; that the blood leaving
the right heart by the pulmonary artery, returned
to the left heart by the pulmonary veins; that the
blood left the heart and returned to the heart; that
there was, consequently, a circuit, circulation; and
this idea of the circulation, so grand and so new,
was first formed by Servetus.
In order to understand how this communication
takes place by the lungs, said Servetus, we must
learn the connection, the multitude of unions of
the arterial vein with the venous artery in this
immittit, alterum quod educit: reliqua duo in dextro, alterum
quod in pulmoneni sanguinem emittit alterum quod e jecore
admittit. (De H'pp. et Plat, decret., lib. vi., p. 264.)
(1) Dexter ventriculus ......... a cava vena, quoties cor
dilatatur ac disteuditur, magnum sanguinis vim attrahit,
quern, adjuvantibus forte ad hoc ventriculi foveis, excoquit:
ac suo calore attenuans, levioremque, et qui aptius irnpetu
postmodum per arterias ferri possit reddens, maxima portione
per veutriculorum cordis septi poros in sinistrum vemriculum
desudare sinit (it is seen on page 19 that he admitted these
openings in the septum only out of complaisance to Galen),
reliquam autem ejus sanguinis partern, dum cor contrahitur
arctaturque, per veuam arterialem in pulmonem delegat.
( Vesalii, Op. omnia anat. Ed. 1725, t. i., p. 517.)
22 CmCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
organ. And this view of the manner of commu-
nication is confirmed by the calibre of the arterial
vein, which would not be so large, nor carry such
an amount of blood to the lung, if nutrition alone
was to be provided for, especially since in the
embryo (and this is an exceedingly ingenious
remark,) the lung is nourished through other chan-
nels and this blood does not reach it. It must
be then for another purpose that the blood is sent
in such abundance from the heart to the lungs
immediately after birth. It is sent there to be
mixed with air, for it is not air alone, but air
mixed with blood, that passes into the venous
artery. The yellow color is given to the blood
by the lungs and not by the heart. 1
(1) Fit autem communicatio haec non per parictem cordis
medium, ut vulgo creditor, sed magno artificio a dextro cordis
ventriculo, longo per pulmones ductu, agitatur sanguis sub-
tilis; a pulmonibus prscparatur; flavus efficitur, et a vena
arteriosa in arteriam venosam transfunditur. (Christianitmi
Reslitutio : Totius Ecclesise apostolicoe ad sua limina vocatio,
in integrum restitutte cognitione Dei, fidei Christi, justifica-
tionis nostrte, regenerations baptism! et coencu Domini
manducationis; restitutio denique nobis regno ccclesti,
Uabylonis impise captivitate solutil, et Antichristo cum suis
penitus destructo. Vienna^ Allobrogum, MDLIII.)
[In an appendix to the work of M. Flourens are some ten or
twelve pages, being all the physiological parts, of this ein-
gular work of Servetus, so interesting in the history both
of physiology and of theology. As full extracts are made
mSTORY OF TIIE DISCOVERY. 23
All this is full of sagacity, acuteness and pene-
tration. The connection or union of the pulmona-
ry artery with the pulmonary rein in the lungs
by an infinite number of branches ; the calibre of
the pulmonary artery, which would be much too
large if it served only for the nutrition of the
lungs ; the nutrition of this organ in the embryo
without the blood of the pulmonary artery, which
indeed does not then transmit any ; all these are
most excellent and decisive reasons the same
which we give now the true ones.
Let us remark again upon the change of color
in the blood which takes place not in the heart,
but in the lung, and is due to the action of the air.
We know now that it is not the whole of the air
which produces this change, but the oxygen alone.
But except that, except the analysis of the air,
which has been the work of modern chemistry,
how near these ideas were to the truth ! Servetus
not only discovered the true route of the blood
from one side of the heart to the other through
the lungs; he also discovered the true place of
concerning the author's discovery of the pulmonary circula-
tion, and his peculiar views are fully explained in the text,
it has not been deemed necessary to re-print here that
additional amount of matter not so immediately connected
with the subject. All the quotations from Servetus which
follow are taken from the work, the title of which is given
above in full. Tr.~\
24 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
sanguification, of the transformation of the blood,
of its change from black blood to red. Galen
placed the seat of sanguification in the liver ;
Servetus first located it in the lungs; a truth
which was not then remarked, which was not
comprehended until long afterward, and which in-
deed did not receive its full development until
very recent times by the experiments of Goodwin
and Bichat. 1
The passage of the blood from one ventricle
into the other, continues Servetus, is not through
the septum ; in the same manner that the blood
of the vena porta passes into the vena cava
through the liver, so the blood of the arterial vein
passes into the venous artery through the lungs. 2
(1) Quod ita per pulmones fiat communicatio et prseparatio
docet conjunctio varia et communicatio venae arterio-sso cum
arteria venosa in pulmonibus. Confirmat hoc magnitude
insignis vence arteriosse, qua; nee talis, nee tanta facta esset,
nee tantam a corde ipso vim purissimi sanguinis in pulmones
emitteret, ob solum eorum nutrimentum, nee cor pulmonibus
liiic ratione serviret, quum prsesertim antea in embryone
solerent pulmones ipsi aliunde nutriri . . . Ergo ad alium
usum effunditur sanguis a corde in pulmones hora ipsa
nativitatis, et tarn copiosus. Item a pulmonibus ad cor non
simplex aer, sed mixtus sanguine mittitur per arterium
venosam. Ergo in pulmonibus fit mixtio. Flavus ille color
a pulmonibus datur sanguini spirituoso, non a corde.
(2) Demum paries ille medius, quum sit vasorum et facul-
tatum expers, non est aptus ad communicationem et elabora-
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 25
A nearer approach to the truth could not have
been made without finding it. Finally, said
Servetus in closing, and he could safely say it, if
any one will compare these things with what
Galen has written in the sixth and seventh books
of his work, De usu partium, he will see clearly
the truth which Galen did not perceive. 1
Columbus.
Six years after Servetus, Realdo Columbus, one of
the best anatomists Padua ever had, (Padua which
had so many of them ; Yesalius, Columbus, Fal-
lopius, Fabricius ab Aquapendente ! ) Realdo Col-
umbus discovered again and independently 2 the
pulmonary circulation.
Between the two ventricles, said he, is the sep-
tum through which it is believed the blood passes
tionem illam... Eodem artificio, quo in hepate fit transfusio
a vena porta ad venam cavam propter sanguinem, fit etiam
in pulmone transfusio a vena arteriosa ad arteriam venosam
propter spiritum (or more exactly, propter scnguinem spiritu-
OSMTO.)
(1) Si quis hsec conferat cum iis quse scribit Galenus, lib.
vi et vii. De usu partium, veritatem penitus intelliget, ab ipso
Galeno non animadversam.
(2) See in chap, iv what is said farther upon this point.
Neither Columbus, nor those who came immediately after him
could have been acquainted with the work of Servetus.
26 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
from the right to the left ; but this is a great
mistake, for the blood is carried by the arterial
vein into the lungs ; from thence it passes, with the
air, by the venous artery into the left ventricle of
the heart, which no one has yet seen : quod nemo
hactenus aut animadverf.it, aut scriptum reliquit,
licet maxime sit ab omnibus animadvertendum. 1
Coesalpinus.
Finally, Csesalpinus described in his turn, and
without citing Columbus, (whom he surely did not
know, since he does not allude to him : great
merit is always honest,) the pulmonary circulation ;
and this time not merely the fact appears but
also the word. Caesalpinus formally named the
passage of the blood from one side of the heart to
the other by the lungs, the circulation.
This circulation, said he, which carries the blood
from the right heart through the lung into the left,
corresponds perfectly with the disposition of the
(1) Inter hos ventriculos septum adest, per quod fere omnes
existimant sanguini i\ dextro ventriculo ad sinistrum adi-
tum patefieri ; ... sed longa errant via : nam sanguis per
arteriosam venam ad pulmonem fertur, ibique attenuatur ;
deinde cum aere una per arteriam venalem ad sinistrum
cordis ventriculum defartur : quod nemo hactenus aut ani-
madvertit, aut scriptum reliquit, licet maxime sit ab om-
nibus animadvertendum. (Realdi Columbi, De re anatomicd,
edition 1572, p. 325.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 27
parts. For each ventricle has two vessels, one by
which the blood arrives and the other by which it
departs ; the vessel by which the blood arrives at
the right ventricle is the vena cava, that by which
it leaves is the pulmonary artery ; the vessels which
pour the blood into the left ventricle are the
pulmonary veins, the vessel which affords it exit
is the aorta. 1
Thus then was the pulmonary circulation dis-
covered.
Cresalpinus and the general circulation.
The pulmonary circulation was discovered ; but
so far, until Csesalpinus, not a word had been
uttered in regard to the general circulation, the
circulation of the body, which we call the greater
.in comparison to the pulmonary which we term
the lesser.
(1) Iluic sanguinis circulationi ex dextro cordis ventriculo
per pulmones in sinistrum ejusdem ventriculum optime
respondent ea qua? ex dissectione apparent. Nam duo sunt
vasa in dextrum ventriculnm desinentia, duo etiam in si-
nistrum. Duorum autem unum intromittit tantum, alte-
rum educit, membranis eo ingenio constitutis. Vas igitur
intromittens vena est magna quidem in dextro, qme cava
nppellatur; parva autem in sinistro ex pulmone introdu-
cens.... Vas autem educens arteria est magna quidem in
einistro, qua: aorta appellatur, parva autera in dextro, ad-
pulmones derivans... (Andrea? Coesalpini, Quceslionum peri-
pateficarum, lib, v, p. 125, edition des Junte. Venise, 1593.)
3
28 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Galen originated a very symmetrical physiology.
According to him there were four temperaments,
the sanguine, the phlegmatic, the bilious, and the
atra-bilious ; and four humors, blood, phlegm, bile,
and black bile ; he had also three kinds of spirits,
the natural, the vital, the animal; and three
sources of these spirits, the liver, the heart and
the brain!
Farther, the brain was the origin of all the
nerves, the heart of all the arteries, and the liver
of all the veins.
The veins, having their source in the liver ,
carried the blood to all parts of the body. Strange
error ! one that the most simple experiment, or
even the most simple attention to an occurrence
coming under daily observation, would have served
to destroy. For certainly bleeding was practiced
every day, and every day the vein must have been
seen to swell below and not above the ligature, .
showing that the course of the blood in the veins
was from the extremities to the heart, and not
from the heart to the extremities.
There is an excellent chapter in Vesalius on the
utility of experiments on living animals. Vesalius
truly remarks, that a simple experiment on a living
animal will teach more than long observation of
the dead body. For instance, if one wishes to
know whether the arteries contain blood or air,
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 29
it is only necessary to open an artery in a living
animal, and it is seen that it contains blood. 1
Unhappily Vesalius stopped with the arteries;
he did not pass on to the veins ; he was content to
believe, in regard to them, that a simple inspection
of the dead animal sufficed " to show that they
carried the blood to the extremities." 2
Caesalpinus was the first, and the only one
before Harvey, who called attention to the swelling
of the veins which takes place below and never
above the ligature. It is a very curious thing,
he observes, that the veins become distended
below the ligature and not above it. Those who
bleed patients, added he, are familiar with the
fact ; they always place the ligature above the
place of puncture and not below it : quaia tument
vence ultra vinculum non citrd ; which should be
just the contrary if the movement of the blood
was from the heart toward the external parts of
the body. 3
(1) Atqurc ita levi negotio observatur in arteriis sanguinem
natura contineri, si quando arteriam in vivis aperimus.
(Ibid, p. 568.)
(2) Coeterum in venarum usu inquirendo, vix quoque vi-
vorum sectione opus est: quum in mortuis affatim discamus
eas sanguinem per universum corpus deferre. Ibid, p. 568.
(3) Sed illud speculatione dignum videtur, propter quid ex
vinculo intumescunt venae ultra locum apprehensum, non
citra: quod experimento sciunt qui venam secant; vincu-
30 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
He says elsewhere : the blood conducted to the
heart by the veins, receives there its perfection,
and this perfection acquired, it is carried by the
arteries to all parts of the body. 1 A better con-
ception of the general circulation could not be
found, nor a better definition be given in as short
a sentence.
Caesalpinus possessed a mind of a superior order.
He was the first among the moderns, who fully
appreciated method in classification, or classifica-
tion founded upon organism.. 2 Before his time plants
were classified according to their external appear-
ances, their names, supposed medicinal virtues,
etc. In the classification of plants by Caesalpinus,
all the characteristics are drawn from the plants
themselves ; and guided by a happy tact, he
recognised first the most important organs and
those which furnish the most important charac-
teristics, the organs of fructification, the flowers,
lum enim adhibent citra locum sectionis, non ultra; quia
tument venae ultra vinculum non citra. Debuisset autem
opposite modo contingere, si motus sanguinis et spiritus a
visceribus fit in totum corpus... (Quaestionum medicarum,
lib. ii, same edition, p. 231.)
(1) In animalibus videmus alimentuui per venas duel ad
cor tanquam ad officinam caloris insiti, et, adepta inibi ul-
tima perfectione, per arterias in universum corpus distribui,
agente spiritu, qui ex eodem alimento in corde gignitur.
(De plantis, Florence, 1583, lib. ii, cap. II, p. 3.)
(2) [" Method is the soul of science." Linnaeus.']
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 31
fruits and grains. Caesalpinus has the double
glory of having hecn the first to give us a method
in science, and the first to point out the two cir-
culations.
Fabricius ab Acquapendente.
Fabricius ab Acquapendente has also two honors ;
he discovered the valves of the veins, and he was
the teacher of Harvey.
Fabricius discovered the valves of the veins in
1574. He saw well that they open toward the
heart. They oppose, therefore, any passage of
the blood from the heart to the external parts in
the veins ; it must go then from the parts toward
the heart the reverse of what takes place in the
arteries, which have no valves.
The valves of the veins are the anatomical proof
of the circulation of the blood the proof that it
makes a circuit, that it returns upon itself, that it
circulates. But Fabricius did not understand this
proof; he saw the fact, but failed to draw from it
that important deduction which was left for the
genius of Harvey.
Sarpi.
Something should here be said of Sarpi, to whom
has been attributed both the discovery of the circu-
lation of the blood and of the valves of the veins.
As to the discovery of the circulation, his claim
is founded upon a paper discovered among his
32 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
manuscripts after his death by Father Fulgence.
In this paper we are assured that Sarpi describes
the circulation of the blood.
In regard to the valves, Gassendi relates in his
Life of Peiresc, that Peiresc told him that the dis-
covery of the valves of the veins was due to Sarpi,
who confided it to Fabricius. 1 But Fabricius tells
us positively that he discovered the valves of the
veins himself. They were, says he, unknown be-
fore the year 1574, when I perceived them for the
first time with great joy; summd cum letitid. 2
Fabricius was a man cf surpassing knowledge in
anatomy, and as respectable morally as he was in-
tellectually ; and he quotes Sarpi elsewhere in re-
gard to some observations he had made upon the
action of light on the pupil. 3 But we are forced
to conclude, with Tiraboschi, that although Sarpi
(1) De quibus (valvulis) ipse aliquid inaudierat ab Acqua-_
pendente, et quarum inventorem primum Sarpium Servitam
meminerat. ( Vita Peyreschii, lib. iv., p. 222.)
(2) De his itaque in prtesentiii locuturis, subit primum mi-
rari quo modo ostiola hsec ad hanc usque oetatem tarn priscos
quam recentiores anatomicos adeo latuerint, ut non solum
nulla prorsus mentio de ipsis facta sit, sed neque aliquis prius
hjcc viderit quam anno 1574, quo a me summa cum laetitia
inter dissecandum observata fuere. (De venarum Osliolis :
Hieronymi Fabrici ab Acquapendente Opera omnia anatomica.
Edition d'Albinus, 1737, p. 150.)
(3) De oculo, visus organo. (Same edition, p. 229. The
quotation will be found farther on.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 33
may possibly have taken part in the discovery of
the circulation of the blood, more and other proof
of the fact must be furnished, before it can be con-
sidered established. 1
Vasseus or Le Vasseur, and a quotation of M. Portal.
Le Vasseur was a disciple of Jacques Sylvius or
Dubois, who was first the master and the very wor-
thy master of Yesalius, and afterward the fiercest
of his adversaries.
Le Vasseur wrote a small work in Latin, which
was little if any thing more than an abridgment of
the anatomy and physiology of Galen. This little
work passed through several editions, and from the
first, was translated into French by maitre Jean
Canappe, docteur en medecine.
M. Portal, in his Histoire de ranatomie, says
that Le Vasseur "knew almost as much as we do
of the circulation of the blood." "For fear," adds
he, " that I may be accused of having mutilated the
text I will give the author's own words :
Dextrum ventrieulum, qui sanguineus appellatur,
vena cava ingreditur, et vena arteriosa egreditur
quce in pulmonem dispergitur, sanguinem elabora-
tum confer ens Sinistro ventriculo cordis qui
(1) Io dunque non neghero al Sarpi 1'onor di questa sco-
perta, ma bramero solainente che se ne possan produrre piii
certe et piii autentiche pruove. (Storia della letteratura itul-
iana } t. vii., p. 597.)
34 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
caloris nativi fons esf, et spirituosus appellatur, ar-
teria venosa quce ex pulmone .... M. Portal stops
at these words, quce ex pulmone, and the reader,
following the impulse which has been given com-
pletes the sentence; which brings the blood back
again from the lungs to the heart; and consequently
Le Vasseur " knew as much as we do of the circu-
lation." But not at all! Le Vasseur was not
speaking of the blood, he was speaking^of air!
Here is the entire paragraph which I give from
the old French of Canappe :
"The vena cava empties into the right ventricle
which is called sanguineous, and from which de-
parts the arterial vein which is dispersed and dis-
tributed to the lung and carries the elaborated
blood .... Into the left ventricle, which is the
fountain of natural heat, and is called spiritus, is
inserted the venous artery, which brings from the
lung, (and it is at this word that Portal stops)
which brings from the lung air to the heart, and
evacuates from here the fuliginous excrements."
Harvey.
When Harvey appeared every thing relative to
the circulation of the blood had been indicated or
suspected; nothing had been established. Nothing
had been established ; and this is so true that Fa-
bricius, who comes after Caesalpinus, and who dis-
covered the valves of the veins, knew nothing of
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 35
the circulation. 1 Csesalpinus himself who so plainly
perceived the two circulations, mixed with the idea
of the pulmonary circulation the error of a per-
forated septum. Sanguis partim per medium sep-
tum, partim per medios pulmones . ... ex dextro in
sinistrum ventriculum cordis transmittitur. 2 Serve-
tus said nothing of the general circulation. Colum-
bus repeated, after Galen, the fictions of the origin
of the veins in the liver 3 and the transmission
of blood to the extremities by them. 4
I admit, with Sprengel, that nothing explains
Harvey better than "his education at Padua." 5
(1) He believed that the only use of the valves was to pre-
vent too great an accumulation of blood in the inferior parts of
the body, an occurrence which would be attended with the
double inconvenience of too great a supply to the lower parts
and too small a quantity in the upper. Ea ratione, uti opinor
a natuni genittc, ut sanguinem quadamtenus remorentur, ne
confertim, ac fluminis instar, aut ad pedes, aut in manus et
digitos universus influat, colligaturque; duoque incommoda
eveniant, turn ut superiores artuum partes alimenti penurid
laborent, turn vero manus et pedes tumore perpetuo pre-
mantur. (Loc. cit., p. 150.)
(2) Qucest. peripatet. (Lib. V., p. 126.)
(3) Est igitur jecur omnium venarum caput, fons, origo et
radix, p. 300.
(4) Venae nihil aliud sunt quam vasa concava ... ut
sanguinem ad singula membra deferant fabrefacta, p. 305,
(5) Sprengel's History of Medicine, French translation by
Jourdan. Paris, 1815, torn, iv., p. 87.
4
36 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Undoubtedly this education at Padua was a piece
of good fortune for Harvey, but it was also, if I
may be allowed so to express myself, a piece of
good fortune for the circulation to pass into the
hands of Harvey, the man most capable of study-
ing it, of investigating it, of comprehending it in
all its relations, and of placing it in its true light
before the world.
Harvey has been reproached for not citing his
predecessors; but he quotes Fabricius who discov-
ered the valves without perceiving their uses ; l he
cited Columbus who had most strongly combatted
the error of the perforated septum; 2 finally he
(1) Clarissimus Hieronymus Fabricius ab Acquapendente,
peritissimus anatomicus et venerabilis senex, primus
in venis membraneas valvulus delineavit, figura sigmoides, vel
semilunares portiunculas tunicse interioris venarum, emi-
nentes et tenuissimas Harum valvularum usum in-
ventor non est assecutus, nee alii addiderunt; non est enim
ne pondere deorsum sanguia in inferiora totus ruat: sunt
namque in jugularibus deorsum spectantes, et sanguinem sur-
eum prohibentes ferri : nam ubique spectant a radicibus ven-
arum versus cordis locum (Gulielmi Harvei Uxer-
citatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis, cap. xiii.)
(2) Cur non iisdem argumentis, de transitu sanguinis in
adultis per pulmones, fidem similem habent, et cum Columbo,
peritissimo, doctissimoque anatomico, idem asserunt, et cre-
dunt ex amplitudine, et fabrica vasorum pulmonum ? Arteria
enim venosa, et similiter ventriculus, repleti sunt semper san-
guine, quern venis hue venisse necesse est, nulla alia quam
per pulmones semita, ut et ille, et nos ex ante dictis et autop-
eia, aliisque argumentis palam esse existimamus. (Cap. vii.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 37
came from Padua where the state of the question
was fully understood, where every thing which had
been said upon the circulation was known by all.
Harvey's work is a master-piece. This little
book of a hundred pages is the most beautiful vol-
ume on physiology. Harvey commenced with the
movements of the heart; and first, he remarked
that the auricle and the ventricle of each side of the
heart contract successively. When the right auri-
cle contracts, the bloo'd passes into the right ven-
tricle ; when the right ventricle contracts, the blood
passes into the pulmonary artery; from the pul-
monary artery it passes into the pulmonary veins ;
from thence it goes into the left auricle which
contracts and forces it into the left ventricle, the
contractions of this ventricle expel it through the
aorta into all the arteries of the body and from
them it is collected by the veins and returned to
the heart from whence it started. At each passage
from one cavity into another he observed there
were valves, membranes, little gates, (ostiola, as
Fabricius calls them), which open to allow the blood
to pass one way and close to prevent its passage
in the opposite direction. The valves of the right
auricle allow the blood to pass into the ventricle
but prevent its return into the auricle ; the valves
of the ventricle allow it to pass into the pulmonary
artery but prevent it from coming back into itself;
on the left side the valves of the auricle allow its
38 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
passage into the ventricle but not backward, and
those of the ventricle permit its onward course into
the aorta and in no other direction; the valves of
the veins present no obstruction to its course to-
ward the heart but bar its passage back toward the
arteries.
After the heart, came the arteries. Galen
attributed the pulsations of the arteries to a pulsifio
virtue, which they derived from the heart with their
tunics. He made an experiment to prove this
statement, but he made it badly. He opened an
artery and introduced a tube through the opening ;
he then tied the artery over the tube and as he
tied it too tightly the blood ceased to flow, or flowed
only in very feeble jets; the artery ceased to beat
below the ligature and Galen concluded, therefore,
that the beating of the arteries depended upon a
pulsific virtue drawn by their coats from the heart,
since a simple ligature sufficed to prevent the puls-
ation in all that part of the artery on its distal
side. 1
(1) Arteriam unam e 1 magnis et conspicuis quampiam, si
voles, nudabis; primoque pelle remota ipsam ab adjacent!
suppositoque corpore tamdiu separare non graveris quoad
filum circum immittere valeas; deinde secundum longitu-
dinem arteriam incide, calamumque et concavum et pervium
in foramen intrude, vel seneam aliquam fistulam, quo et vul-
nus obturetur, et sanguis exilire non possit. Quoadusque sic
se arteriam habere conspicies, ipsam totam pulsare videbis :
cum primum vero obductum filum in laqucum contrahcns ar-
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 39
Harvey did not repeat the experiment of Galen.
It is too complicated, and he believed it scarcely
possible. 1 He contented himself with more simple
observations. He saw that when an artery was
opened the blood came out in unequal jets, alter-
nately stronger and feebler; he observed that the
stronger jets always corresponded with the diastole
of the artery and not with the systole ; he concluded
that it was the impulse, the shock of the blood
which distended the artery and caused it to beat.
If the artery dilated of its own inherent power it
could not expel the blood with the greatest force
at the moment of greatest dilatation. 2
Harvey profited farther by a case of ossification
of the femoral artery which came under his obser-
terine tunicas calamo obstrinxeris, non ampliu9 arteriam ultra,
laqueum pulsare videbis, etiarnsi spiritus et sanguis ad arte-
riam, quaa est ultra filum, sicuti prius faciebat, per concavita-
tem calami feratur; quod si propterea pulsabant arteria), pul-
Barent nunc partes qua) sunt ultra laqueum, sed non pulsant:
igitur perspicuum est, quum moveri posse desinunt, non prop-
ter spiritum in concavitatibus discurrentem, sed ob virtutem
in tunicas transmissam, arterias a corde moveri. (An sanguis
in arteriis naturd contineatur, p. 62.)
(1) Nee ego feci experimentum Galeni, nee recte posse fieri
vivo corpore ob impetuosi sanguinis ex arteria eruptionem
puto (Prosmium.)
(2) Sed et in arteriotomia et vulneribus contrarium
manifestum est. Sanguis enim saliendo ab arteriis profundi-
tur cum iinpetu, modo longius, modo propius vicissim prosi-
liendo, et saltus semper est in arteria> diastole et non in
40 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
vation ; the artery pulsated below the ossification ;
the ossification did not prevent the transmission of
the pretended pulsific virtue, or rather no such vir-
tue existed; the arterial pulsation is only due then
to the movement of the blood, solely to the im-
pulse of the blood against the walls of the artery. 1
systole. Quo clare apparet impulsu sanguinis arteriam dis-
tendi. Ipsa enim dum distenditur, non potest sanguinem
tanta vi projicere (Ibid.)
(1) Sed quo clarius, quod in dubio est appareat, pulsificum
vim non per arteriarum tunicas a corde manare, habeo, e no-
bilissimi veri cadavere, arterice descendentes portionem, cum
duobus cruralibus ramis, spithamaa longitudine, exemtam, in
os fistulosum conversam ; per cujus cavum, dum vivebat no-
bilissimus vir, descendens arteriosus sanguis in pedes sub-
ditas arterias suo impulsu agitabat ; in quo tamen casu arteria
idem passa, tanquam si super canaliculum fistulosum constricta
et ligata foret (secundem Galeni experimentum) ut neque
dilatari, eo loco, neque arctari ut follis, neque vim pulsificam
a corde inferioribus et subditis arteriis communicare, aut per
soliditatum ossis deducere facultatum, quam non susceperat,
potuerit. Nihilominus inferioris arteriag pulsum agitari in
cruribus et pedibus optime menimi, dum vivebat, me saepissime
observasse Quare in illo nobilissimo viro necesse in-
feriores arterias ab impulsu sanguinis, ut utres, dilatataa
fuisse, non ut folles ab expansione tunicarum. (Exercitatio
allero ad J. Riolanum.) But this is not all. I have repeated
the experiment of Galen ; far from being scarcely possible as
Harvey believed, it is not even very difficult. I have opened
the aorta of a sheep and introduced a quill, I have tied the
artery over this tube and have seen the blood continue to
pour out through it (which certainly did not take place in
Galen's experiment, or at least only partially, either on ac-
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 41
From the arteries Harvey passed to the veins;
and it is from their valves that he drew the impor-
tant deduction to which I have already alluded,
viz : that they allow to the blood but one course,
movement only in the direction toward which the
valves open, a movement from the external parts
of the body toward the heart.
Finally Harvey made his experiments ; they were
few but decisive, and in this is shown his genius.
When a ligature is tied lightly around an ex-
tremity the blood is arrested in the veins alone
because they alone are superficial; when the liga-
ture is tied tightly the blood is also stopped
in the arteries which lie deeper.
When a vein is tied the swelling takes place
below the ligature ; when an artery is tied it takes
place above; the blood then flows in directly oppo-
tite directions in the arteries and veins; it flows
from the extremities to the heart in the latter, and
from the heart to the extremities in the former. 1
count of the ligature having been too tight or because the tube
became obstructed); the blood continued to flow and the
artery continued to beat below as well as above the ligature.
The pulsative faculty of Galen is not then wholly imaginary.
The blood distends the artery, and because it is distended it
pulsates. (See experiments upon the pulsations or movements
of the arteries, in my Recherches experimentales sur leg propri*
etes et lesfonctions du systeme nerveux; Paris, 1842.
(1) In my lectures at the Jardin des Plantes, I make the fol-
lowing experiment, under the eyes of my pupils, to illustrate
4Z CIRCULATION OP THE BLOOD.
When any artery whatever is opened, and the
blood allowed to flow freely, all the blood of the
body is lost through this opening; then all parts
of the circulating system communicate with one
another, heart, arteries, and veins.
A moment's reflection, in truth, upon the mar-
velous rapidity of the movement of the blood will
convince one that it must necessarily be thus ; for
scarcely has the blood arrived at the heart when it
leaves it and enters the arteries, no sooner has it
entered them than it commences to pass into the
veins, and from the veins it goes immediately into
the heart again ; this course, this continual return
is the circulation.
Modern physiology dates from the discovery of
the circulation of the blood. This discovery marked
the entrance of the moderns into science. Un-
til then they had followed the ancients; they dared
now walk alone. Harvey had discovered the most
beautiful phenomenon of the animal economy; one
to which all antiquity had never been able to arrive.
What became then of the authority of the masters ?
Authority was dethroned; it was no longer neces-
the circulation of the blood. I cause the crural vein and ar-
tery of ^a dead dog to be opened; a tube is inserted into the
open end of the artery and water is injected by means of a
syringe; in a few minutes the water injected into the artery
runs out of the vein. It is a complete illustration of the cir
culation.
HISTORY OP THE DISCOVERT. 3
sary to swear by Galen and by Aristotle, but by
Harvey.
I will relate, farther on, the ridiculous obstinacy
with which the faculty rejected the circulation ; the
bad reasonings of Riolan, the unhappy pleasantries
of Guy Patin. But this wrong belonged only to
the faculty, not to the nation. Moliere ridiculed
Guy Patin, and Boileau ridiculed the faculty. 1 Be-
fore Moliere and Boileau the greatest of moderns,
Descartes, had proclaimed the circulation: "But
if it be demanded how the blood in the veins is not
exhausted by this perpetual flow into the heart,
and how the arteries are not filled to overflowing,
since all that goes into the heart is poured into
them, I have only to give as an answer that which
has been written by a physician of England, to
whom we must give the honor of having first
investigated this subject, and of being the first to
teach that there are at the extremities of the arte-
ries many little passages through which the blood
received from the heart passes into the small
branches of the veins, and through these vessels
returns to the heart; so that its course is nothing
but a perpetual circulation." 2
After Descartes we must quote Dionis.
While the faculty was rejecting the circulation
(1) See VArret burlesque.
(2) Discours de la methode. Ed. of M. Cousin, p. 179.
44 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Dionis taught it in the Jardin du Roi. "I was
chosen to demonstrate in your royal garden," says
Dionis in his dedication to Louis XIV., " the cir-
culation of the blood and the new discoveries, and
I acquitted myself of this duty with all the ardor
and the exactitude which the orders of your Ma-
jesty deserve." These words honor the memory of
Louis XIV.
Thus upon one side France devoted a chair to
the teaching of the circulation of the blood, and
on the other, as we shall soon see, completed this
great work by the discovery of the reservoir
of the chyle (receptaculum chili] by Jean Pecquet.
So far I have exhibited what belongs to Harvey
in the discovery of the circulation of the blood, but
I have only spoken of the circulation in the adult;
it remains to be seen how much he contributed to-
ward the discovery of the foetal circulation.. This
will be the subject of the following chapter.
II.
DUVERNEY AND THE FCETAL CIRCULATION.
The heart of the foetus is not like that of the
adult. In the adult the two sides of the heart are
completely separated. An entire and solid mem-
brane, like that between the ventricles, separates
the two auricles, and the two large arteries, the
pulmonary artery and the aorta, have no commu-
nication with each other.
In the foetus all this is different. The septum
between the two auricles is perforated by an open-
ing called the foramen ovale and the pulmonary
artery and aorta are connected by a canal which
vre call the ductus arteriosus.
What are the objects of this conformation?
First, let us remark that there are two points
to examine structure and use. Galen was ac-
quainted with the structure; Harvey discovered
the use.
Galen.
In the foetus, says Galen, the vena cava opens
into the venous (pulmonary) artery. 1 The arterial
vein and the grand artery (pulmonary artery and
(1) "In fcetibus vena cava in arteriam venosam est per-
tusa." (De usu partium, lib. xv., p. 212.)
46 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
aorta) are likewise united by a third vessel which
nature has formed expressly for that purpose. 1 And
as the two first-named vessels, the vena cava and
the pulmonary artery, touch each other, nature has
made an opening from one to the other, and has
applied a membrane to this opening, which yields
readily to the blood as it passes from the vena
cava to the venous artery, and resists on the con-
trary, the return of the blood from the venous
artery back into the vena cava. 2
All this is admirable, adds Galen ; but what is
still more admirable is that a few days after birth,
this opening between the vena cava and the venous
artery closes; the canal which unites the arterial
vein and the great artery becomes obliterated;
and he who would seek for these early communica-
tions some time later will not be able to find them ;
of one of them, of the opening between the vena
(1) " Verum cum hrcc vasa inter se aliquantum distarent,
aliud tertium vas exiguum, quod utrumque conjungeret, na-
tura efficit." (De usupartium.)
(2). "In reliquis vero duobus, cum hcec mutuo sese contin-
gerent, velut foramen quoddam utrique commune pertudit:
turn membranam quamdam in eo, instar operculi, est maclii-
nata, quae ad pulmonis vas facile resupinaretur, quo sangumi
a vena cavil cum impetu affluent! cederet quidem, prohiberet
autem ne sanguis rursum in venam cavam reverteretur."
(Ibid.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 47
cava and the venous artery he will not find a
trace. 1
It must not be supposed, continues Galen, that
we are speaking of communications or openings
small, scarcely visible, and doubtful; the openings
are large, evident, patent, of which there can be
no question ; their existence has been denied how-
ever, but to those who are unbelieving I will say,
if they have eyes I will convince them, if they have
no eyes, if they are blind, they at least have hands
and I will make them touch them. 2
(1) "Haec quidem omnia naturse opera sunt admiranda:
Buperat vero omnem admirationem praedicti foraminis, baud
ita multo post, conglutinatio. Etenim, quamprimum animana
in lucem est editum, membranam, qute est ad foramen,
coalescentem reperias, nondum tamen coaluisse; cum autem
animal perfectum fuerit, cctateque jam floruerit, si locum hunc
ad unguem densatum inspexeris, negabis fuisse aliquando
tempus in quo fuerit pertusus Pari modo id vas, quod
magnam arteriam veme quas fertur ad pulmonem connectit,
cum alia? omnes animalis particular augeantur, non modo non
augetur, verum etiam tenuis semper effici conspicitur, adeo
ut, tempore procedente, penitus tabescat, atque exsiccetur."
(Do usu partium.)
(2) Et ego iis, qui nos ita insectantnr, si modo ocu-
los habent, ostentam magnae arterice propaginem, et venae
cava) orificium, sin vero sunt casci, vasa in manus
sibi imposita contrectare jubebo; nam neque exiguum eorum
utrumque. neque vulgare est, sed amplum admodum, commem-
orabilemque intra sese habet meatum, quern non solum is qui
oculos habet non ignoraverit, sed ne is quidem cui tangendi
erit potestas, si solum ad anatonien velit acccdcre." (Ibid.)
48 CIRCULATION OP THE BLOOD.
The anatomists of the time of Galen strongly
resembled the anatomists of all times, ever slow to
observe and ever ready to accuse those who ob-
served of being deceived. Galen compared them
to the man who, in counting his asses, forgot the
one upon which he was mounted and immediately
accused his neighbors of having stolen one ! They
were like this man because in the enumeration of
errors they always forgot those of which they them-
selves were guilty.
The early modern anatomists ; Vesalius and FallopiuB.
Among modern anatomists Fallopius was the
first to see the ductus arteriosus, and Vesalius the
first to observe the foramen ovale. These two
great men had frequent occasion to encounter each
other; 1 they created modern anatomy; they pos-
sessed the spirit of investigation in the highest
degree, and both were men of most superior mind.
Fallopius, commenting on Vesalius, is astonished
that this portion of canal, or artery, which unites
the arterial vein with the aorta, could so long have
escaped the attention of anatomists and conse-
quently of Vesalius ; especially as in the foetus the
canal is widely open, and although obliterated
afterward, it still remains as a thick, hard body;
(1) Vesalius wrote an Examination of the Observations of
Fallopius, and the Observations of Fallopius are in fact a con-
tinual examination of the Anatomy of Vesalius.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 49
and finally Galen has spoken of it, although cer-
tainly in but few words : verbis paucissimis tamen. 1
You are astonished, writes Vesalius in reply,
that anatomists make no mention of a canal which
unites the arterial vein and the great artery ; and,
upon this subject, you quote a passage of Galen,
taken from Book xv. of De usu partium. My dear
Fallopius, this passage did not escape me, and much
less that of Book vi., which I wonder extremely
you do not remember, in which Galen, as well as
in the passage of Book xv., speaks not only of
this communication, but of another placed between
the venous artery and the vena cava. 2
Vesalius admits, in another place, that not hav-
ing paid sufficient attention to the great vessels,
(1) "In arteriarum historic illud in memoriam venit, quod
non levem admirationem excitat: l..qua ratione factum sit,
quod anatomici fere omnes tarn negligenter observarint par-
tern illam canalis vel arteriae, qua jungitur vena arterialis
circa basim cordis ipsi aortas ; cum in foetu tarn aperta pateat,
tantusque sit aditus ab aorta ad venam arterialem See-
undo quia a Galeno in decimo quinto De usu partium, cap.
sexto, aliquot (paucissimis tamen) verbis designatur." (Ga-
brielis Faloppii Observations anatomicce : in the edition of the
OSuvres de Vesale, already quoted, t. ii., p. 730.)
(2) "CoDterum (ut ad te redeam) miraris plurimum ana-
tomicos nullam fecisse mentionem unionis mutuaeque aper-
tionis venae arterealis ad magnam arteriam, Galenique locum
ex decimo quinto De usu partium adducis. Mi Fallopi, hie
locus me nou latuit, ac multo minus is, cujus miror hie te non
meminisse, et quo in sexto De usu partium, Galenus, perinde
50 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
the ductus arleriosus had escaped his observation.
But, since, he had turned to the examination of
the heart of the foetus, and immediately the fora-
men ovale presented itself to him. 1 He mentions
the oval form of this opening : ovatd proeditum effi-
gie. He studied the duclus arteriosus; he opened
it ; 2 and with his attention fixed upon the passage
of Galen, 3 he admires the clearness with which that
great man had described it: miratusfui quamobrem
Gralenus hie tarn dilucide vasis privatim meminit,
quo vena arterialis in magnam arteriam pertinet.
Arantius and Carcanus.
Arantius was the pupil of Vesalius; Carcanus
was the student of Fallopius. No sooner had Ve-
ac in decimo quinto. non tantum hanc unionem, verum et
illam, qua; arterias venali cum cavil vemi obtigit, satis prolix
et (si quis animum sedulo intendit) aperte commemorat."
(Andreic Vasalii Opera, t. ii., p. 798.)
(1) At quum propagines quasdam, ut veluti vasa qutcdam
ex uno vase in aliud producta, extra magnorum vasorum cav-
itates parum recte pervestigarem, illam unionem non reperi
Mox in foetu, ven:e cavte caudicem, longa sec-
tione secundum rectitudinem aperui. Hie sese turn nihil
manifestius mihi obtulit quam maximum vence cavne in ve-
nalem arteriam pertinens foramen." (t. ii., p. 798.)
(2) "Pari artificio, venae arterialis caudicem longa
etiam sectione patefeci, caudicisque illius cum magnii arteria
unionem et mutuum foramen observavi." (Ibid.)
(3) "Sedulo Galeni locis rursus perlectis." (Ibid.)
HISTORY OP THE DISCOVERT. 51
salius and Fallopius laid with so much eclat, the
foundations of the anatomy of the adult, than their
pupils began to investigate the anatomy of the
foetus.
Arantius, in his work on the human fcetus, com-
mences by informing us that he only proposes to
make more clear what Galen has so well written
on the vessels and heart of the foetus. 1 Carcanus
expresses himself in the same manner. 2
Here then, it will be said, was a very remarka-
ble concord in rendering homage. Vesalius and
Fallopius disputing as to who could proclaim most
loudly the discovery of Galen ; Arantius and Car-
canus partaking this great admiration and continu-
ing the praise.
Assuredly if after this a desire to name either of
these things seized anatomists, the foramen ovale
for instance, it would receive the name of Galen,
and be called foramen G-aleno. But not at all-^-
it is called the foramen Botallil
(1) "Quod cordis vasa, aorta scilicet venae arteriali, et vena
cava arterite venali, conjugantur, Galenus optime declaravit,
sed cum ab ipso nou ita perspicue despripta fuerint,
ut facile a minus exercitatis intelligi possent, ad ejus senten-
tise explicationem pauca qutedam addere constitui." (De hu-
manofcetu, edition of 1595, p. 37.)
(2) De vasorwn cordis infcetu unions.
5
52 CIRCULATION OF THE BLCOD.
Botal.
Botal was not strictly an anatomist. He was
a bold physician, who arriving in Paris 1 at a time
when the faculty abused purgatives, could scarcely
fail of making an impression, for he abused blood-
letting. 2 The faculty purged their patients with-
out mercy, and he bled his without pity. The
faculty became angry. 3 Botal persevered; from
Botal to Broussais those who have held out against
the faculty have soon become celebrated.
Botal, in dissecting a subject one day, found?
what sometimes happens in adult life, the fora-
men ovale open; he saw it and immediately
imagined that he had made the greatest discovery
which could be made !
Some time ago, says he, when reflecting upon
the discord between Galen and Columbus in regard
to the route which the blood follows in passing
through the heart, Galen maintaining that it
passes by foraminse in the median septum, and
Columbus by the venous artery, I opened a heart
and immediately perceived a very large conduit,
leading directly from the right auricle into the
left, which conduit, or vein, can by good right be
named the nutritive.vein of the arteries, for through
(1) Botal was from Asti, in Piedmont.
(2) See his treatise De curatione per sanguini* missionem.
(3) Much was written upon blood-letting on both sides, and
the controversy was extremely beneficial.
HISTORY OF THE DISCONERY. 53
it the arterial blood passes into the left ventricle,
and from there goes into all the arteries, and it
does not pass through the septum, or by the venous
artery, as Galen and Columbus have believed. 1
Botal was here mistaken on every point ! first,
the blood which passes through the foramen ovale
from the right into the left auricle is not arterial
blood, but venous, the pretended vein could not
possibly then be called the nutritive vein of the
arteries : second, this opening does not exist in the
adult, or only exists as an exception, it is a pecu-
liarity of foetal existence, and this, of all who have
written upon it, Botal alone did not comprehend ;
and finally, Botal tells us that the opening or con-
duit (vein, as he calls it,) had not been observed
(1) Diebus iis proximo peractis, cum Galenum atque Col-
umbum dissentire viderem de via, qua in cor sanguis, qui
per arterias vagatur, fertur, asserente Galeno hunc in cor
transfundi per parva foraminula cordis septo insita, Columbo
vero per alia (Columbus did not say per alia, but per arteriosam
venam, and he said rightly. Botal did not perceive how
important exactitude was. See Chap. I.) ad arteriam veno.
sam, ...cor dividere occocpi, ubi... satis conspicuum reperj
ductum, juxta auriculam dextram, qui statim in sinistram
aurem recto tramite fertur; qui ductus, vel vena, jure arteria.
rum nutrix dici potest, ob id quod per hanc feratur
sanguis arterialis in cordis sinistrum ventriculum, et conse-
quenter in omncs arterias, non autem per septum, vel veno.
sam arteriam, ut Galenus vel Columbus putaverunt., (Botalli
Opera omnia, edition of Van Home, I860, p 66.)
54 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
by any one previous to him ; a nullo anted notata : l
yet the foramen ovale had been seen and described,
and admirably described, by Galen, by Vesalius,
by Arantius and by Carcanus !
The uses of the ductus arteriosus and foramen ovale.
Galen asks himself what can be the use of the
ductus arteriosus and of the foramen ovale, and
responds to his own inquiry.
But his answer is wholly theoretical ; it is ex-
tremely complicated and finely drawn, yet in every
point coherent, which is the mark of a great master.
Galen can not be explained in portions ; in study-
ing his theories the great whole must be kept in
view or nothing will be understood.
Here, for example, the idea he has of the uses
of the ductus arteriosus and the foramen ovale
agrees with those concerning the veins and arteries ;
his ideas of the veins and arteries agree with those
in regard to the two species of blood, the spirituous
blood and the venous blood ; and the idea which he
had framed of these two kinds of blood are in
harmony with his conceptions of the nature of
organs, of which some require more of the spirituous
blood than of the venous and others exactly the
reverse.
(1) " Vena arterianum nutrix, a nullo anted notata:" such is
the title under which Botal published his pretended dis-
covery.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 55
The lungs require more of the spirituous than of
the venous blood : all the other organs, less delicate
and less light, require more of the latter than of
the former. 1 The spirituous blood, more subtile,
is contained in the thick-walled arteries, the venous
and denser blood runs in the veins, the tunics of
which are thin.
All the organs -which require more venous than
spirituous blood (that is to say, all the organs
except the lungs) receive the spirituous blood
through the arteries, the dense walls of which allow
only the most subtile portion, the spirit, 2 to escape,
and they receive the venous blood by the veins
which allow the liquid to escape through their thin
walls. 3
(1) Pulmonis corpus leve est, ac rarum, et velut ex
spuma quadam sanguinea concreta conflatum, ob eamque
causam puro sanguine, et vaporoso, ac tenui indiguit, non
autem, quomodo jecur, limoso et crasso. (De usu partium,
p. 151.)
(2) Nihil nisi tenuissimum sinit elabi. (Ibid, p. 151.
(3) Quod ergo satius fuit in toto animalis corpore san-
guinem quidem tenui ac rara, spirituin vero crassa ac densa
concludi tunica, longa egere ratione non arbitror : satis enim
puto esse substantive utriusque rationem acdifferentiam obiter
indicate ; quod silicet sanguis quidem crassus est, gravis, agrae-
que mobilis, spiritus vero tenuis, et levis, et citus; quodque
periculum erat ne hie expiraret repente, atque, evolaret ab
animali, nisi crassis, et densis, atque undique ccnstrictis
asservatus fuisset tunicis, atque coercitus : contra vero in
sanguine, nisi tenuis et rara fuisset quern ipsum continet
tunica, non facile circumfusis partibus distribueretur. (Ibid.)
56 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
On the contrary, the lungs, which need much
more of the spirituous blood than of the venous,
receive this kind of blood by a vein, (or, to speak
like Galen, by an artery which has the coats of
a vein ; the venous artery,) and the venous blood
by an artery (or, again to follow Galen, by a vein
which has the coats of an artery, the arterial
vein.)
This has reference to the adult ; let us pass to
the foetus.
It is the spirituous blood which gives to the
lungs of the adult that fine, delicate and reticula-
ted structure, which may be said to be formed of
the foam of the blood: velut ex quddam sanguined
concretd spumd conflatum.
But the lungs have no need of this peculiar 1
tissue until after birth. After birth they move
before birth they are motionless. They then need
only the same structure and the same blood as the
other organs ; then like the other organs they are
thick, gross and red, and then by a singular
arrangement they receive like them, more venous
than spirituous blood. 2 How can such a change
take place ? It is made by means of these two
(1) Constructionem ipsius fecerit eximiam praoter reli-
quas omnes animalis partes. ( De usu partium, p. 151.)
(2) At cur pulmo in iis, qui adhuc utero geruntur, est
ruber, non autem, ut in perfectis animalibis, subalbus ? quia
tune uutritur (quemadmodum reliqua viscera) per vasa
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 57
communications two openings in the heart of
the foetus which do not exist in the heart of the
adult the ductua arteriosus and the foramen
ovale.
These two openings change everything, as far as
the lungs are concerned, in the course of the blood
in the foetus. In the adult the venous artery
carries to the lungs the spirituous blood which it
has received from the left ventricle (the ventricle
in which the spirits are formed) in the foetus the
venous artery carries to the lungs the venous blood
which it receives directly from the vena cava, by
the foramen ovale. 1 In the adult the arterial
vein carries to the lung the venous blood which it
has received from the vena cava, in the foetus the
arterial vein carries to the lungs the spirituous
blood which it has received from the aorta by the
ductus arteriosus.
unicam tunicam, et earn tenucm habentia ; ad ea nam ex vena
cavil sanguis pervenit, quo tempore foetus utero gestatur: in
natis vero occsecatur quidem vasorum perforatio, quin
ctiam pulmo tune motu perpetuo agitatur,... cequum est igitur
hie quoque naturam admirari, qua) cum viscus augeri dun-
taxat oporteret, sanguinem purum ei suppeditabat ; cum vero
ad motum fuit translatum, camera levem fecit ob
earn igitur causam in fcetibus vena cava in arteriam venosam
est pertusa. (De usupartium, p. 156.)
(1) Probavimus in foctibus necessarium esse, cum
arteria venosa sanguinem a venii cava occipiat, trahi ex ed
non minimum. (Ibid, p. 156.)
00 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Between the foetus and the adult there is then
the widest difference.
In the adult the lung receives much spirituous
blood and little venous, in the foetus much venous
and little spirituous ; in the adult the spirituous
blood reaches the lungs through the venous artery,
in the foetus by the arterial vein ; in the adult the
venous blood arrives by the arterial vein, in the
foetus by the venous artery ; thus the effect of the
ductus arteriosus and foramen ovale is to invert
the course of the blood and directly changes the
functions of the two vessels, giving to the venous
artery the functions of the arterial vein and vice
versa.
Harvey.
Galen supposed that the blood passed through
the foramen ovale, its course being from the right
auricle to the left and from the left auricle
through the pulmonary vein into the lungs.
But this is not the case ; the blood flows through
the foramen ovale in order to pass from the right
auricle into the left, and from the left auricle into
the left ventricle, from thence into the aorta, and
so on to all parts of the body, escaping the
passage through the lungs. He also supposed
that the blood passed through the ductus arteriosus
from the aorta into the pulmonary artery and
thence into the lungs. Neither is this the truth.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 59
It goes from the pulmonary artery by the ductus
arteriosus into the aorta, and from thence to all
parts of the body, again escaping a passage
through the lungs. In a word, the foramen ovale
and the ductus arteriosus are not designed to afford
a different route by which the blood may reach
the lungs in the foetus from the adult as Galen
believed, but their object is to prevent it going to
the lungs at all. 1
In the adult there are two circulations the pul-
monary and the general : in the foetus there is but
one, the general. Everything .in the adult is
arranged in harmony with the existence of two
o /
circulations, for neither the two sides, of the heart,
nor the two great arteries communicate with each
other ; in the foetus all is disposed so that there
may be but one circulation, for the two sides of
the heart, (i. e., the two auricles) open into each
other by the foramen ovale, and the two great
arteries are connected by the ductus arteriosus.
In the adult, the two sides of the heart being
completely separated, the blood can not pass from
one to the other without making the circuit through
the lungs ; there is, therefore, in the adult a pul-
monary circulation ; in the foetus, where the two
sides of the heart communicate, the blood passes
(1) Or, at least, that only the least possible quantity may
reach them ; in truth only that can go there which escapes
the foramen ovale and the duclus arteriosus.
6
60 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
directly from one side to the other through the
foramen ovale, 1 and there is, therefore, no pulmon-
ary circulation.
The great point in the adult is, that the blood
goes to the lungs because it is by the lungs that
the adult respires ; the great point in the foetus is
that respiration is not performed by the lungs and,
therefore, the blood does not go to them. The
foetus respires by means of another organ. 2
The lungs of the foetus do not respire they do
not dilate. They can not then receive the blood
of the general circulation ; and they do not
receive it, through the agency of the foramen
ovale and ductus arteriosus, as was so well seen
by Harvey, the most ingenious man of the whole
world in drawing from the structure of parts infer-
ences as to their uses. 3
(1) And also directly from the pulmonary artery to the aorta
by the ductus arteriosus.
(2) By the placenta in viviparous animals; by the vessels
of the allantois in oviparous.
(3) Ex quibus intelligitur in embryone humano, id
ipsum accidere, ut cor suo motu, per patentissimas vias
sanguinem de vena cava in arteriam magnam apertissime
traducat, per utriusque ventriculi ductum. Dexter si quidem
sanguinem ab auricula recipiens, inde per venam arteriosam,
et propaginem suam (canalem arteriosum dictam) in magnam
arteriam propellit. Sinister similiter eodem tempore, medi-
ante auriculae motu, recipit sanguinem (in illam sinistram
auriculam deductum scilicet per foramen ovale e vena cava),
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 61
Duverney and Mery.
Harvey's work appeared in 1G28. In 1699,
more than half a century later, and when all the
teachings of that great man, as well upon the
foetal as upon the adult circulation, had been
adopted, and for some time adopted, there arose
all at once a very lively discussion in. our Academy
touching the route which the blood follows in the
heart of the foetus.
In this celebrated discussion between two anato-
mists of profound ability, Mery and Duverney,
Mery was constantly wrong and Duverney as
constantly right. Mery was a man of great talent
but not of as good judgment as Duverney. The
saying of Mery has been, preserved for us by
Fontenelle : " We anatomists are like the coachmen
of Paris who know all the streets, even the smallest
and least frequented, but who know nothing of
what is taking place in the houses."
Mery admitted that the blood which passes
through the ductus arteriosus goes from the pul-
monary artery to the aorta, and consequently
escapes the lungs, as Harvey taught. The difficul-
et tensione suit, et constrictione per radicem aortae in magnam
itidem arteriam simul impellit....Ita in embryonibus, dum
pulmones otiantur, et nullarn actionem aut motum habent,
quasi nulli forent, natura duobus ventriculis cordis quasi
uno utitur, ad sanguinem transmittendum (Gul. Harvei
Exercit. anat. de motu cordis, etc., cap. vi.)
62 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
ty was only in regard to the foramen ovale. Ac-
cording to Harvey the blood which passes through
this opening, flows from the right auricle to the left.
Mery held to the contrary, that it passed from the
left auricle into the rioht.
o
Duverney sustained the opinion of Harvey.
The foramen ovale is at first completely open.
Soon a delicate membrane commences to form at
its edges, which increases and extends itself by
degrees, until finally it closes the opening entirely.
Now this membrane is disposed in such a manner
as to allow the blood to pass from the right into
the left auricle, and to resist on the contrary, its
motion in the opposite direction.
This Harvey had already observed before Du-
verney, 1 and Galen before Harvey. 2
"The mechanism of the valve of the foramen
(1) Insuper in illo foramine ovali e regione, qufe arteriam
venosa\n respicit, operculi instar membrana tenuis et dura
ejBt, foramine .major, quoe postea in adultis, operiens hoc
foramen, et coalescens undique, istud omnino obstruit, et
prope obliterat. Hsec, inq'uam, membrana sic constituta est
ut, dum laxe in se concidit, sanguini a cava affluent!
cedat qu'idem, at ne rursus in cavam refluat, impediat: ut
liceat existintare in embryone sanguinem continue* debere
per hoc foramen transire d6 vend cava in arteriam venosam,
inde in auriculum sinistram cordis, et postquam ingressum
fuerit, remeare nunquam posse. (Gul. Harvei JEzercit, atiat. de
molu cordis, etc., p. 44.)
. (2) See note 2 page 46.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 63
ovale in the foetus," says Duverney, " is always
such as to allow a free passage of the blood from
the vena cava into the left auricle of the heart,
and to prevent its return."
He says in another place, " the valve of the
foramen ovale of the foetus, allows the blood to
pass easily from the vena cava on into the vein of
the lungs, but it entirely prevents its return."
Farther, "the ductus arteriosus of the foetus
serves to relieve the lungs by conducting the
greater part of the blood of the pulmonary artery
into the aorta."
Finally, he says, " in regard to the human
foetus, which does not respire so long as it is in
the body of the mother, if the blood furnished by
the two venae cavae circulated through the lungs,
it would be exposed to fatal accidents ; it was
necessary thenfor nature to provide special routes
for the relief of the lungs, and she has made
these by means of the foramen ovale and the
ductus arteriosus." 1
All these ideas are clear land correct ; but Du-
verney did not stop here. From this study so well
pursued, from this clear conception of the circula-
tion of the blood in the foetus, he extended his
investigations to subjects the most important and
the most novel the action of the air in respira-
(1) Mem. de 1'Acad. des Sciences, 1699.
64 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
tion, and the part which respiration plays in the
different classes of animals.
Harvey had already felt the intimate connection
between the circulation and the respiration. The
question should now be, he says, to know why the
blood passes through the lungs in the adult, and
why it does not pass through them in the foetus; why
this is necessary in man and in animals which like
him are warm-blooded, and why it is not necessary,
(or at least not so completely) in those that are
cold-blooded, such as the turtle and the frog.
May it be that in man and other warm-blooded
animals the blood is so hot that it would ignite,
inflame, perhaps, if it did not go to the lungs to mix
with air and be cooled ? *
We see then that Harvey did not yet suspect
any other use for respiration than that of cooling
the blood; and undoubtedly the' discoveries of
modern chemistry were necessary in order to
(1) Restat ut illud perquiramus Aut cur melius sit in
adolescentibus, sanguinis transitu naturam omnino occlusisse
vias patentes illas, quibus ante in embryone et foetu usa
fuerat Cur in majoribus et perfectioribus animalibus,
iisque adultis, natura sanguinem transcolari per pulmonum
parenchyma potius velit quam ut in cteteris animalibus...
Sive hoc sit quod majora et perfectiora animalia sint calidiora,
et cum sint adulta, eorum calor magis (ut ila dicam) igniatur
et ut suffocetur sit proclivis, et ideo tranare et trajici per
pulmones, ut inspirato acre contemperetur, et ab ebullitione
et suffocatione vindicetur (G. Harvey Opera, p. 47.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 65
pass with certainty from this idea to the opposite
one of respiration being the source of the heat of
the blood. Meanwhile a close and attentive obser-
vation of the facts of comparative anatomy would
also conduct to this opposite and novel view ; by
this means Duverney arrived at it.
"When we consider," says Duverney, "that
the blood of the pulmonary vein is of a brighter
tint than that of the pulmonary artery, we . easily
conclude that it is charged with some particles
of air." 1
"It is in the lungs," he adds, "that the air
communicates to the blood those particles so active
and penetrating, upon which its heat depends ; it
is by this mixture that it is rendered fit for
nourishment. We need not be astonished that it
is necessary for man, a being of so many different,
violent and long continued sensations and move-
ments, for all the blood to circulate through the
lungs, but it is sufficient for the turtle and other
similar animals, such as the frog and the sala-
mander, which pass all the winter in a state of
repose, and Avhich have only sluggish movements,
for a third part of the blood to pass through the
lungs." 2
Finally, he wrote this sentence : " The princi-
pal function of the lungs is to impregnate the blood
(1) Mem. de I'Acad. des sc., 1701, p. 238.
(2) Ibid, 1699, p. 248.
66 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
with air, and thus to render it capable of carrying
everywhere nutriment, life and heat." 1
It was not possible to approach nearer to the
truth.
In these two chapters, I have studied the dis-
covery of the circulation of the blood properly
speaking ; it remains for me to consider the dis-
covery of the lacteah and of the reservoir of the
chyle, receptaculum cJiyli; this will occupy the
following chapter.
(1) Mem. de FAcad. des. sc., 1701, p. 240.
III.
ASELLI, PECQCET, RUDBECK, BARTHOLIN.
The lactealg, the receptaculum chyli, and the lymphatics.
I HAVE already said that modern physiology
dates from the discovery of the circulation of the
blood.
This discovery Harvey made in 1619 and taught
it publicly until 1628 when he published it in his
book; 1 and about this time a new influence, the
divine breath of discovery, animated all minds;
Aselli discovered the lacteals in 1622 ; Pecquet the
receptacle of the chyle in 1648; Rudbeck and
Thomas Bartholin the lymphatics between 1650
and 1652. Nothing can be more astonishing than
this first outburst of modern genius.
The ancients knew nothing of the lacteals, the
lymphatic vessels or the reservoir of the chyle.
Galen believed that the chyle was taken up by
the veins of the intestines, and carried by these
veins to the liver, and that in the liver it was
changed into blood. He believed also that it was
(1) "Per novem et amplius annos multis ocularibus de-
monstrationibus in conspectu vestro confirmatum." (See hia
Dedication, p. l.j
68 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
in the liver that the change of blood from black to
red took place.
The liver was then at once the organ for con-
verting the chyle into blood and changing black
blood into red; the liver was the organ of san-
guification.
The theory of sanguification, of the formation
of blood by the liver, was Galen's great theory and
great error. It was a learned error, (and such are
the most tenacious), which commenced with Galen,
was victorious over Harvey, and did not submit
until attacked by Pecquet. It was an error for
whose dissipation all the discoveries I have just
mentioned were necessary, that of the lacteals, that
of the lymphatics, and that of the receptaculum
chyli ; and not only these but others, such as the
true uses of respiration, the real action of the air
upon the blood, and the true use of the heart.
This singular succession of discoveries remains
for us to consider.
Galen and the theory of sanguification.
The theory of sanguification was made up of four
points, as I have just said: the first, that the chyle
was taken up by the veins of the intestines ; the sec-
ond, that these veins carried it to the liver ; the
third, that in the liver it was changed into blood;
and the fourth, that by the same organ black blood
was changed into red.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 69
But to these four points two others were joined ;
the formation of spirits, and the maintenance of
animal heat.
1 and 2. As fast as the chyle is formed in the
stomach and intestines, says Galen, the veins take
it up and carry it to a central and common place,
which is the liver. 1
Galen very ingeniously compared the veins of tho
intestines to the roots of a tree ; the smaller unit-
ing to larger ones, these to larger still, and so on
to the liver where all were united into one called
the vena porta, 2 because it is the gate of the liver,
the gate through which everything passes that
arrives at the liver. 3
(1) "Prius elaboratum in ventriculo alimentum vence ipsse de-
ferunt ad aliquem concoctionis locum communem totius anima-
lis, quern hepar nominamus." (De usupartium, lib. iv., p. 135.)
(2) "^Colligens vero Datura, ut in arboribus, exiguas illas
radices in crassiores, ita in animalibus vasa minora in ma-
jora, et ea rursus in alia majora, idque semper agens usque
ad hepar, in unam omnia venam coegit, quos ad portas sita
est." (Ibid., p. 141.) QUCB ad porta sita est; literally, which
is situated at the gate of the liver. But this place is the
gate of the liver only because it receives the vena porta,
and all which it conveys or brings. "The vena porta, thus
named by the ancients, because they believed that it carried
the chyle to the liver to be converted into blood." (Dionis :
Anatomie de I'homme suivant la circulation, etc., 5th ed., p. 205.)
(3) "Quemadmodum in urbes nihil nisi per portas invehi
potest: ita nihil potest in jecur deferri, nisi prius in hunc
feratur locum. (De constitut. art. mod., p. 41.)
70 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
3. Having reached the liver the chyle ferments
there, is concocted, divests itself of its impurities
and changes into blood, in the same manner as the
must in the vats ferments, clears itself of foul mat-
ters and changes into wine : * " and in the same
way," says Descartes, "that the juice of the black
grape, which is white, turns into claret wine when
the husks remain in the vats with it."
And remark, that the liver has everything neces-
sary for purification, for it has the gall-bladder,
the spleen and the kidneys ; 2 the gall-bladder which
attracts and receives the lightest of the impurities,
the spleen which removes the thickest, and the
kidneys the more aqueous parts. 3
4. The chyle which the liver receives is not yet
blood, but only an obscure form of blood ; 4 in the
(1) "Porro, juxta exempli similitudinem, intellige mihi dis-
tributum a ventriculo ad hepar chylum, a visceris caliditate,
velut vinum ipsum in dolio musteum, fervere, concoqui, et
alterari in sanguinis boni generationem.' : (De usu partium,
lib. iv., p. 136.
(2) " Excrementorum expurgatoria instrumental
renes, lienem, bilisque receptricem. vesicain." (De Hipp, et
Plat, decret., lib. vi.)
(3) "Vesicam, quae leve et flavum superfluum receptura
erat, natura imposuit liepati; splenem \ero qui crassum et
limosum ..., renes tenue hoc et acquosum excrementum."
(De usu partium, lib. iii., p. 136.
(4) "Ipsum autem hepar, postquam id nutrimentum accep-
erit, obscuramque speciem sanguinis referens, inducit
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 71
liver the chyle undergoes its last change and puri-
fication, and becomes perfect blood, taking on the
red color. 1
The constant merit of Galen was to have co-
herent and consistent ideas; his constant fault was
that he did not verify his ideas by observation.
Here, for example, the most simple experiment
would have shown him how greatly he was de-
ceived. He had only to expose the liver in a liv-
ing animal and he would have seen the blood enter
it black and leave it of the same color. This single
experiment would have led him to suspect his whole
theory.
5. The formation of spirits. Galen enumerated
three kinds of spirits the natural, the vital,
and the animal.
He Avas not as positive of the existence of the
natural as of the other two ; but in case they did
exist he located them in the liver; 2 the vital he
ei postremum ornamentum ad sanguinis exact! generationem."
(De u.iu parlium, p. 135.)
(1) Et ab innatii caliditate concretionem exactam est adep-
tus, ruber jam et purus sursum ad gibbas partes hepatis as-
cendit." (Ibid., p. 136.) "Sanguinis rubri prima in jecore
generatio est." (De Hipp, et Plat, decret., lib. vi., p. 266.)
(2) "Quod si naturalis quoque aliquis spiritus est, utique
is quoque in jecore et venis continebitur." (De methodo
medcndi, lib. xii., p. 77.
72 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
placed in the heart; 1 the animal in the brain; 2 and
he accounted for the origin of the two kinds
of whose existence he was sure, in the fol-
lowing manner, both being formed from the
blood. 3
The vilal spirits are the exhalation of the blood.*
They are formed in the heart, of the vapor of the
blood, particularly in the left ventricle, 5 and from
these vital spirits, carried in the arteries to the
brain 7 and there more completely elaborated, ri-
pened, and perfected, are formed the animal spirits.
(1) "Vitalis spiritus et in arteriis et in corde gignitur."
(De Hipp, et Plat, decret., lib. vii., p. 269.)
(2) "Animalis spiritus cerebrum, veluti fontem esse
demonstravimus." (De methodo jnedendi, lib. xii., p. 77.)
(3) "Sicut autem vitalis spiritus secundum arterias et cor
generatur, ita animalis ex vitali amplius elaborate
habet generationem." (De virtut. corp. disp., p. 61.)
(4) "Spiritus exhalatio qutedam sanguinia benigni." (De
usuparlium lib. vi., p. 155.)
(5) "Copiosior, in sinistro, spiritus substantial (Ibid.,
lib. vi-, p. 154.)
(6) "Ab arteriis quibus in ipsum cerebrum acclivis est po-
sitio, effluit semper spiritus, belle in retiformi plexu confectus,
proinde in his moratus diutissime, conficitur; confec-
tus autem statim cerebri ventriculis incidit." (Ibid., lib. ix.,
p. 172.)
(7) "Consentaneum igitur rationi est spiritum hunc in cer-
ebri ventriculis oriri." (De Hip. et Plat, decret., lib. vii.,
p. 269.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 73
"Similarly," says Jean Canappe in his quaint
language, "hath nature, making from the vital
spirits the animal, fashioned and fabricated close
to the brain the rete mirabile, like unto a labyrinth
in which they are elaborated. And afterward they
are sent and transmitted to the anterior ventricles
where they are still better prepared and rectified:
and thence they pass by the common conduit to
the posterior ventricle where they receive perfect
elaboration." l
The animal or cerebral spirit, the spirit born of
the brain, is the most noble and most perfect part
of man; it is the substance of the soul itself, or at
least its immediate instrument: 2 reason, which is
the distinguishing mark of man is seated in the
brain, 3 and hence, says Galen, originated the in-
genious fable of the birth of Minerva from the
brain of Jupiter, which implies that the brain is
the source of all the productions of human genius,
of all our arts and all our sciences. 4
(1) L 1 anatomic du corps humain, etc., p. 83.
(2) "Oportet hunc ipsum spiritum, aut ipsam animss
substantiam esse, aut primum ipsius instrumentum." (De
utilitate respirationis, p. 225.)
(3) "At ratio, quse revera homo est, sedem in cerebro
habens " (De usu partii>m, lib. iv., p. 139.)
(4) "Fabula quoc ex Jovis capite Minervam, hoc est pru-
dentiam, natam esse ait " (De Hipp, et Plat, decret., lib.
iii., p. 247.)
74 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
6. Animal heat. According to Galen, animal
heat is a primitive force, natural and innate. 1 The
heart is the source of this heat. 2 From the heart
arises the heat of the blood, and from the blood
that of the body. 3 Of all parts of the body the
heart is the warmest; 4 and of the heart itself the
warmest part is the left ventricle; 5 and therefore
this ventricle is the place in which the spirits
are formed, the place where the venous blood is
changed into spirituous.
But for this heat, natural and innate, to be dura-
ble an aliment was necessary, and in order that it
should not become excessive, a moderator. The
aliment is the blood; 6 the blood, sa^s Galen, is the
(1) "Calorem autem non acquisition verum ipsum
primum, primogenitum et insitum." (De trem., palp., convuls ,
etc., p. 54.)
(2) "Cor caloris nativi, quo animal regitur, quasi fons qui-
dem, ac focus est." (De usu partium, lib. vi., p. 150.)
(3) "Sanguis vero ipse a corde suum accipit calorem." (De
temperamentis, lib. i., p. 15.) "Et ita calor continue effluit a
corde ad arterias, et per arterias ad totum corpus." (De utilit.
respirat., p. 69, t. vii.)
(4) "Id viscus (cor) turn omnium animalis partium maximd
sanguineum, turn vero calidissimum est." (De temperamentis,
p. 15.)
(5) "Hunc maxime sinum ad summum pervenire caloris
" (De incequali intemperie, p. 44.)
(6) " Non solum nutrimentum animantis partibus ex san-
guine est, sed calor quoque naturalis perseverantiam ex san-
guine obtinet." (De curandi ratione per sang, mission., p. 16.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 75
wood of the fire which burns in the heart; 1 and the
lungs 2 act as moderator and draw unceasingly
by respiration new air into the body and with this
air cool and temper the heart continually. 3
The theory of sanguification is now before us.
Nothing could be more complete, for it com-
menced Avith the formation of the chyle and only
finished with the formation of the animal spirits,
the instrument of the soul.
And nothing could be better connected, for each
step of the process proceeded naturally from the
one preceding; the aliment taken into the body
was converted into chyle by the stomach and in-
testines ; blood was formed from this chyle in the
liver; the vital spirits were exhalations from the
blood in the heart, and the animal spirits were
elaborated from the vital in the brain. Finally,
the blood acquired its temperature from the heart;
and the heart found in the blood the aliment for its
innate heat.
But nothing could be more false.
Of all these ideas, these views so well arranged,
of this theory so well constructed, and of all this
(1) " Quemaclmodum ex lignis comburi idoneis qui in foco
est ignis " (De curandi ratione per sang, mission., p. 16.)
(2) " Respirationem ingeniti caloris moderationem servare
" (De morb. vulg., com. v., p. 190.)
(3) "Refrigerat ipsum (cor) inspiratio quidem, frigidam
qualitatem ei affundens." (De usupartium, lib. vi., p. 148.)
7
76 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
ingenious labor of the human mind, nothing was
true and nothing remains. Galen was not right
upon a single point. He said that the chyle is
taken up by the veins, which is not so; that it goes
to the liver, which is not so ; that in the liver the
blood changes from black to red, and that is not
so, while his spirits are but a word, and his innate
heat only a dream.
Voltaire said that a Frenchman who in his
time went from Paris to London found things much
changed; he left the world full, he found it empty;
he left a philosophy which explained everything
by impulse and found one that accounted for all by
attraction, etc.
We must admit that if Galen could revisit us
and examine physiology now he would also find
things much changed ! He believed that the chyle
was carried by veins, and he would be told that
there are special vessels for its transmission very
distinct from the veins ; he thought the chyle went
to the liver, he would learn now that it goes to the
heart; he believed that the change in the blood
from black to red took place in the liver, he would
see now that it takes place in the lungs; he was
very sure of at least two kinds of spirits, the vital
and the animal, and now he would be told that
these spirits are chimeras ; finally, he believed that
animal heat was an innate primitive property,
seated in the heart, and continually tempered,
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 77
cooled, by the lungs, now he would learn that the
heart has no such property, that it is but a muscle,
and that the lungs, instead of being an organ for
cooling the heat of the heart are even the source of
the heat of that and of all other organs, and that
no such thing as innate heat exists in the body.
Aselli and the lacteals.
The ancients knew of only three kinds of vessels,
veins, arteries, and nerves (which they took for
vessels). 1 The veins conducted the blood properly
speaking, the arteries the spirituous blood, and the
nerves the animal spirits. 2
Such was the condition of things. Harvey had
not yet published his book, for it was in 1622, when
all at once the report spread that an anatomist of
Cremona, a professor of Pavia, had just discovered
(1) Notwithstanding Galen's teachings; he knew well
enough that the nerves are not hollow : " Nervi qui a cerebro
ac spinali medulla oriuntur nullam habent perspicuam cavi-
tatem." (De usu pariium, lib. xv., p. 210.) He was only de-
ceived in regard to the optic nerves: "Solis his nervis, ante-
quam in oculos inserantur, aperte intus sensibilis quidem
meatus adest." (De nervorum dissectione, p. 53.)
(2) " Sic vencc sanguinem distribuunt, arterio? sanguinem
cum spiritu vitali permixtum, nervi animalem spiritum."
(Aselli: De lactibus, sive lacteis venis, quarto vasorum mesardico-
rum genere dissertatio, 1627, p. 51.)
78 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
a fourth order of vessels 1 white vessels, vessels
distinct from arteries, veins and nerves and which
convey the chyle.
Imagine, if it is possible in our day, the effect
produced by such news. The whole world of
science was moved by it. The ancients had not
then seen all had not described everything; one
now could go farther than Galen and than Aris-
totle ; the wisdom of antiquity was no longer the
boundary of human knowledge, and the spirit of
modern discovery had commenced its career.
Aselli has told us himself, and in a most simple
manner, how the great discovery the first, strictly
speaking, of modern discoveries (for, I repeat,
Harvey's book had not yet appeared,) was made,
and accidentally made. 2
He had just demonstrated upon a living dog,
and less for himself than for the benefit of some
friends, the recurrent nerves. From the recurrent
nerves he was requested to pass to the movements
of the diaphragm. h.e opened the abdomen and
(1) "Prater tria ilia vasorum genera mesenterium pera-
grantium (the veins, the arteries and the nerves,) reliquum aliud
est genus, quartum, novum, ac ignotum hactenus." (De lacti-
bus, etc., p. 18.)
(2) "A me prime, quod relegata omni ambitione dixerim,
abhinc fere triennium, hoc est anno adeo 1622, casu magis, ut
verum fatear, quam consilio, aut data in id peculiar! opera,
observatum," (Ibid, etc., p. 18.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 79
immediately exposed a most beautiful network of
white vessels. 1
What were these vessels? Could they be ves-
sels for the chyle ? That was the inspiration of
genius! Aselli pricked one of them; he saw a
white liquid exude, and in a transport of joy which
can well be conceived, he cried "with Archimedes
"Eureka.'" 2
But the animal died and all disappeared. Aselli
opened another dog ; no white vessels were to be
.seen! Could he have been mistaken? Happily he
remembered that the first dog had eaten heartily
(1) " Canem, ad diem julii 23 ejusdem anni, bene* habitum,
beneque pastum, incidendum vivum sutnpseram, amicorum
quorumdam rogatu, quibus recurrentes nerves videre forte*
placuerat. Ea nervorum demonstratione perfunctus quum
essem, visum est eodem in cane, eadem opera, diaphragmatis
quoque motum observare. Hoc dum conor, et earn in rem ab-
domen aperio, intestinaque cum ventriculo collecta in unum
deorsum manu impello, plurimos repente, eosque tenuissimos,
candidissimosque, ceu funiculos, per omne mesenterium et
per intestina, infinitis propemodum propaginibus disperses,
conspicio." (De lactibus, etc., p. 19.)
(2) "Rei novitate perculsus, hsesi aliquandiu tacitus, cum
menti variaj occurrerent qua) inter anatomicos versantur, de
venis mesara'icis, et eorum officio controversiae; ut me
collegi experiendi causa, adacto acutissimo scalpello, unum ex
illis et majorem funiculum pertundo. Vix bene ferieram, et
confestim liquorem album, lactis aut cremoris instar, prosilire
video. Quo viso, cum tenere lastitiam non possem, conversua
ad eos qui aderant: Eureka, inquam, cum Archimede "
(Ibid., p. 19.)
80 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
just before the experiment, while the second one
was fasting. He took another and fed him well ;
some hours afterward he opened its abdomen and
the white vessels were evident, as in the first one. 1
The existence of these white vessels, of the ves-
sels of the chyle, was no longer doubtful. Aselli
named them lacteals, because they contain a white
liquid similar to milk. 2 This liquid is the chyle,
and these lacteal vessels alone convey the chyle; 3
the veins have nothing to do with it.
(1) "Verum eo diu frui non licuit. Exspiravit mox inter
haec canis, et una (dictu iniram) omnis ilia tot vasorum series
congeriesque defecta candore suo, defecta succo, inter manua
ipsas nostras ac pene inter oculos ita evanuit, vix ut vestigia
Bui relinqueret Conquisitus ergo canis alius in diem
posterum, et nulla interposita mora die eodem apertus. Porro
minime, ut spes, ita successus fuit. Nulluiu prorsus, vel mini-
mum album vasculum in conspectum sese dubat. Et jam ab-
jici anomo coeperam Verum in memoriam revocans,
siccum et impastum fuisse canem, quem secandum arripueram,
suspicatusque, quod res erat, ne intestinorum inanitas causa
fuisset vasorum obliterationis, etiam tertio rem periclitari volui,
alio rursus in id comparato cane. Is sectus ad diem 26, hora
circiter sexta postquam cibus illi adhibitus affatim fuerat,
nihil fefellit expectatio. Omnia qme primus luculenter et ad-
amussim exhibuit Confirmatus gemino hoc experi-
mento, et nihil amplius de re ipsa ambigens, totum me dedi
ad perquirendam earn." (De lactibus, p. 19.)
(2) "Ego vasa haec, aut lacteas, sive albas venas, aut lactes
etiam appellare soleo." (p. 23.) "Non lac ipsum magis sim-
ile lacti est quam liquor qui in illis cernitur." (p. 25.)
(3) " Chylus per eas labitur; verissime idem ex intestinis
ab iis lacitur, hoc est sorbetur exhauriturque." (p. 25.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 81
Pecquet and the reservoir of the chyle.
The lacteals then convey the chyle ; but where
do they carry it ? Aselli believed it was to the liver.
"The use of our veins," says he, "is without any
doubt to carry the chyle, and also without any
doubt to carry it to the liver." 1
The chyle, therefore, still went to the liver, and
Galen's principal error (the principal because all
the others depended upon it, the liver being sup-
posed the organ of sanguification only because the
chyle was carried to it,) existed still. But it could
not maintain its ground much longer.
In 1648, 2 a young man of Dieppe, who had
studied medicine at Montpelier, Jean Pecquet,
tired of cold and dumb 3 facts derived from the
dead organs of the subject, and desiring more cor-
rect knowledge, 4 asked it of the living.
He commenced a series of experiments and re-
searches upon living animals. He opened the
(1) " Actio propria venarum nostrarum, alisque omni dubi-
tatione, chyli distributio ad jecur." (De lactibus, p. 51.)
(2) " Assiduum ferme trium annorum laborem co-
arctavi." (Experimenia nova anatomica, quibus ignotum hactenus
chyli receptaculum, et ab eo per thoracem in ramos usque subclaviot
vasa lactea deteguntur, 1G51, p. 17.)
(3) "Post acquisitam ante annos aliquot, ex cadaverum
eectione, mutam alioqui frigidamque sapientiara." (p. 4.)
(4) " Placuit ex vigenti vivorum animantimn harmonia
verum scientiam experimere." (p. 4.)
82 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
thorax of a dog; in taking out the heart he ob-
served in the midst of the flowing blood a white
liquid which he at first took for pus. 1 A little
study convinced him that this white and milky
liquid was the same as that contained in the lac-
teals was the chyl<?\ and farther observation
showed that it was contained in the canal which
carries it to the subclavian veins and that by these
veins it is poured into the heart; 3 another step
was to learn that this canal commences by a sort
of reservoir or pocket, 4 and another that allilie lac-
(1) " Cor, rescissis quibus reliquo adhseret corpori vascu-
lorum retinaculis, avello ; turn exhausta quoe statim restagna-
verat copia cruoris, albicantem subinde lactei liquoris nee certe
parum fluid! scaturiginem , miror effluere, (p. 4)
sic ut dilitescentis intra thoracem forte saniem abcessus, ex
cruenti puris imagine, suspicarer." (Experimenta nova ana-
tomica, etc., p. 5.)
(2) " Candidas apprim^ liquor, et effuso per mesen-
terium chylo simillimus; sic ut inter utrumque collates invi-
cem et nitor et odor et sapor et consistentia nullum inesse dis-
crimen ostenderint." (p. 5.)
(3) " Unicus, crassiorque canalis, a receptaculo chy-
lum ad quartam dorsi vertebram devolvit, indeque bifidus per
subclaviorum (ut in cane notavimus) ostiola foraminum eum-
dem in cavum exonerat." (p. 17.)
(4) " Lacerata, forte sinistrorsum ad duodecimam cir-
citer dorsi vertebram ampulla, cujus est apprime tenuis mem-
branula, restagnantem demiratus lactis efifusi copiam, suspicor
non exiguum illic ejusdem liquoria occludi receptaculum"
(p. 11.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 83
teals empty into tjiis reservoir which is thus a com-
mon receptacle ; * and lastly he learned that none
of these vessels, absolutely none, go to the liver. 2
The chyle does not then go to the liver; and
since it does not go to that organ can not there be
changed into blood; the liver, therefore, is not the
organ of sanguification ; 3 and the theory of Galen,
a theory which had lived through fifteen centuries,
was finally destroyed.
Rudbeck and the lymphatic vessels ; particularly those of
the Liver.
But this was not all. One discovery was the
cause of another. The discovery of the lacteals
occasioned that of the receptaculum cJiyli, and this
caused the discovery of the lymphatics.
In 1650, and this time again a young man, Olaiis
Rudbeck, afterward one of the most learned men
of Sweden, sought for the common trunk of the
(1) "Sic tandem patuit reconditi chyli penus, et tantis la-
borimus quaesitum receptaculum" (Experimenta nova, an-
atomica, etc., p. 14.) " Lancinata illico receptaculi tunica chy-
lum effudit; et secutus per ejusdem vulneris rimain
dubium omne revulsit scaturienti evidentia." (p. 15.)
(2) "Nullus ad jecur porrigi inventus est." (p. 13.)
(3) " Hactenus e mesenterio chylum in hepatis parenchyma
opinio protrusit, non veritas, et sanguin.eo artificii tribuit im-
meritam visceri prterogativam." (p. 13.)
8
84 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
lacteal vessels and found it. 1 He did not know
that Pecquet had just discovered it. In seeking
for this chyle-duct Ruflbeck remarked upon the
liver certain transparent watery vessels, which he
recognized immediately as new and peculiar as
vessels distinct from the lacteals. 2 These vessels
were lymphatics.
Rudbeck named them hepatico-aqueous vessels;
hepatic because they came from the liver, and
aqueous on account of the transparent fluid which
filled them. 3
He saw their origin, their valves, 4 their termina-
(1) Nova exercitatio anatomica, exhibens ductus hepcticos aquo-
sos et vasa glandularum serosa (in Mangeti Bibliothica anatomica.
Genevas, 1699, t. ii., p. 729.)
(2) " Dum anno 1650 et 1651, in venarum lactearum origi-
nem et insertionem inquirendam versabar, injectaque supra
venam portse cum ductibus cholidocis ligatura, non semel ap-
paruere ductus manifesto ab hepate ad ligaturam intumes-
centes " (p. 730.)
(3) " Haec vasa ductuum hepaticorum aquosorum nomine in-
digitanda duxi: et quidem ductuum hepaticorum, quum et hu-
morem ferant ac ducant, et quod ilium ab hepate accipiant,
indeque suam originem depromant; deinde aquosorum, quod
tali humore ipsorum cavitas infarta sit." (p. 730.)
(4) "Figuram mirabiliter nodosam, ob contentas
valvulas (p. 731.) Aselli had seen the valves of the
lacteals, " in his illud admiratione dignum, quod pluribus val-
vulis, sive ostiolis, interstincti sunt." (De laciibus, etc., p. 38;) '
and Pecquet those of the thoracic duct: "Non desunt suae lac-
teis per thoracem valvulee." (Experim. nov., etc., p. 12.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 85
tion in the receptacle or reservoir of the chyle; 1
and he is the first who observed these points,
who discovered; hut in regard to the discovery of
the lymphatic vessels which are spread everywhere
through the system, he is only the second.
Thomas Bartholin and the lymphatics of the entire body.
Rudbeck discovered the lymphatic vessels 1650-
51; Thomas Bartholin discovered them 1651-52 ; a
he named them lymphatic vessels; 3 he studied them
with attention and with admirable perseverance;
he sought for them everywhere, and he found them
everywhere, in the viscera, in the extremities, etc., 4
and whatever their origin he saw, with Rud-
beck, that they emptied into a common trunk, into
the receptaculum cliyli?
The lymphatics and the lacteals have then a
(1) "In vesiculum chyli sese insinuant." (Magneti,
Bill, anat., t. ii., p. 730.)
(2) "Observavimus quidem saepe in canibus dissectis, im-
primis 15 decemb. 1651, et 9 janu. 1652, ex hepate aquosus
ductua prodeuntes ( Vasorum lymphaticorum Historia
nova, in Opuscula nova, etc., p. 84.)
(8) " A content! liquoris conditione, seu limpida aqua et
lympha, dicenda vasa lymphatica " (p. 96.)
(4) "Exortus lymphaticorum vasorum est ab extremis par-
tibus, seu artubus et visceribus " (p. 97.)
(5) "Vasa aquosa inseruntur in receptaculum chyli
" (P- 97.)
86 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
common trunk and a common receptacle, the re-
servoir and the duct of the chyle ; and by this duct
their contents are poured into the subclavian veins
and by them carried to the heart.
The heart is, therefore, the common rendezvous,
the center of the circulatory system. And this sys-
tem is not composed alone of arteries and veins,
as Galen taught, and as Harvey believed, but of
arteries, veins, lacteals and lymphatics. The com-
plete unity of this great system was finally found.
Thomas Bartholin and the obsequies of the liver.
Thomas Bartholin terminates his "History of the
lymphatic vessels" by a chapter entitled: Post in-
vento vasa lymphatica hepatis exsequioe.
Pecquet having demonstrated that the lacteals
do not go to the liver, that the chyle is not taken
there, and that the liver, therefore, can not be the
organ of sanguification, it was time, in the language
of Bartholin, to perform the obsequies of the liver.
But why does not Bartholin speak of their per-
formance before the discovery of the lymphatics?
Because the first time he saw the lymphatics of
the liver he took them for lacteals going to that
organ. 1 The liver then, he says to himself, re-
(1) ''Fnde quum pellucido liquore splenderent, nee aliud
vas cognitum adhuc esset tamdiu pro lacteis venditavi
Exinde dubitare coepi, visis aquosis ductibus, in artu-
bus, illis similibus " (p. 88.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 87
ceives a part of the chyle-vessels and a portion
of the chyle ; it must have, therefore, a certain part
to play in sanguification ; this function must be
divided between it and the heart. 1
But Bartholin soon recognized the true nature
of the vessels which had deceived him ; they were
not lacteals but lymphatics; 2 instead of going to
the liver they came from it ; they led to the heart,
and consequently the cause of the liver was for-
ever lost. 3
Bartholin treated the liver, which he compared to
a great hero, maximus hero'ibus,* as all great heroes
are treated when their cause is lost, he abandoned
it; and in a vein of learned gaiety, after having
written its obsequies, he composed an epitaph for
it," of which the sense is, that the liver, so long
famous, by means of an usurped title, is now
nothing more than a poor liver reduced to making
bile. 5
(1) "Partitus sum munia cordis et hepatis in opere confi-
ciendi sanguinis, quia ad cor lacteas thoracicas ferri obser-
vavi, et ad bepar non nullas (p. 108.)
(2) "Vidimus quippe vasa ilia prope hepar, sui esse ge-
neris, a contento liquore lymphatica nobis dicta "
(p. 109.)
(3) "Noluimus antiquatte opinioni obstinaiius inhoerere, aut
labantes hepatis derelicti partes diutiiis sequi." (p. 109.)
(4) Vasorum lymphaticorum, etc., p. 111.
(5) Manuel anatomique, Paris, 1661, p. 688.
00 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Riolan and Harvey.
Harvey had no sooner published his work upon
the circulation of the blood than twenty anatomists
took up the pen against the discovery. Harvey
did not reply. The only man to whom Harvey
ever did the honor of responding was Riolan. It
was because Riolan was the best anatomist of those
times. Thomas Bartholin who dedicated to him
his "Histoire des vaisseaux lymphatics," calls him
the greatest anatomist of France and of the world :
Maximo orbis et urbis Parisiensis anatomico.
Riolan passed all his life in seeking, in demon-
strating, and discovering what the ancients had
taught, and in opposing the doctrines of the mod-
erns. He rejected the circulation of the blood, the
lacteals, the receptaculum chyli and the lymphatics.
"Everybody is discovering something new now-a-
days," he exclaims; 1 and it was this that grieved
him. "Pecquet," he continues, "has done much
more ; he has commenced to demolish the structure
and the composition of the human body by his new
and unheard-of doctrines, which completely over-
turn the science of medicine, ancient arid modern,
or ours." 2 "And modern^ or ours" is a curious
expression! but, alas! the modern belongs to no
one; scarcely does it exist before it is past and
another modern has arrived!
(1) Manuel anat., p. 689. (2) Ibid., p. 689.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 89
Meanwhile, Riolan did not deny the existence of
the lacteals; but he held still that they went to the
liver. 1 Harvey denied up to this time the existence
of the lacteals and it is both amusing and singular
to find that Riolan reproaches him tor it. " Har-
vey," says he "a very expert anatomist, the author
and inventor of the circulation of the blood by the
heart and through the lungs, makes but little of
these lacteal veins, believing and sustaining the
doctrine that the chyle passes by the mesenteric
veins, from whence it is drawn by the liver, all of
which astonishes me much, since they truly exist
and we can plainly see them." 2
Here then is Harvey, the author of the most
beautiful of modern discoveries, reproached by his
great adversary Riolan, and reproached for his
opposition to modern doctrines!
The illustrious and learned historian of medicine,
Sprengel, says on this occasion: "A still greater
blot upon the literary character of Harvey is the
contempt which he affected for all subsequent dis-
coveries." These words are unjust. Sprengel did
not reflect sufficiently upon the extent to which
deep reflection exhausts and how much meditation
is necessary for a discovery of a certain order.
(1) " For myself, I believe that these lacteal veins are not
useless, but that they serve to carry the chyle from the intes-
tines to the liver." (p. 696.)
(2) Manuel anatomique, p. 695.)
90 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood; he
gave us a crowd of facts and views, and an admi-
rable general law on generation. 1 After this we
should admire him bless him and not demand
too much of him.
Aristotle and the formation of the blood by the heart.
Galen admitted three principal organs, the liver,
the heart, and the brain ; from the liver proceeded
the veins, from the heart the arteries, and from the
brain the nerves. According to Aristotle all these
came from the heart: veins, arteries and nerves. 2
Aristotle believed that the blood was formed in
the heart; 3 and this opinion in regard to the forma-
tion of the blood by the heart, although for a long
time superseded by the contrary opinion of its
formation by the liver, remained in science. Ser-
vetus makes allusion to it in that immortal passage
which I have already cited, where he says: "The
yellow color is given to the blood by the lungs and
(1) That every living being proceeds from an egg: Omne
vivum ex ovo.
(2) "The heart is the source of all the veins." (History of
animals, book iii., chap, iv.) " Let us pass to the nerves ; they
likewise originate in the heart." (Ibid., chap, v.) Kote that
Aristotle united under the common name of veins, the veins and
the arteries.
(3) "The liquid which proceeds from the food flows conlin-
ally to the heart; it is this liquid which forms blood." (Of
respiration, chap, xx.)
HISTORY OF TIIE DISCOVERY. 91
not by the heart." Caesalpinus adopts it com-
pletely when he says : " the blood, conducted to the
heart by the veins, receives there its last perfec-
tion, and this acquired it is carried to all parts of
the body."
Thus, so soon as it was proved that the chyle
was carried to the heart and not to the liver every-
body returned to the opinion of Aristotle, to the
belief that the blood was formed by the heart.
"This plainly proves," says Pecquet, "the truth
of the teachings of the Prince of the Peripate-
ciens, who held the heart to be the origin of the
veins, and that it is the organ for the formation
of blood." 1 "It is in the heart," says Rudbeck,
" that the blood, being brought from all parts of the
body is mixed with chyle, elaborated, perfected and
colored." 2 Bartholin, as AVC have just seen, divided
the function of sanguification between the liver and
the heart.
They escaped one error only to fall into another.
Two men however soon combatted this other error.
(1) " Sicut evincatur nobili testimonio, quum appo-
site Peripateticorum princeps, et venarum asserat cor esse
principium, et sanguinis officinam." Experimenta nova ana-
tomica, etc., p. 3.)
(2) "Existimo itaque hoc opus naturae (sanguificationis
nempe), hunc in modum fieri. Primo, sanguis a nutritione
residuus, et cordi advectus, una cum chylo, motu ac calore
cordis concoquitur, coloratur, attenuatur, ac distribuitur."
(Mangeti, Bibliotheca anatomica, t. ii., p. 733.)
92 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Stenon demonstrated the heart to be nothing
more than a simple organ of movement a muscle ;
and Lower showed that the blood changes its color
from black to red in the lungs.
Stenon and the true use of the heart.
Stenon was a man of genius. Deluc called him
the first true geologist, because he was the first who
correctly saw the disposition and structure by
layers, the regular stratification of the surface of
the globe; and I call him the first true anatomist
of the brain, because he was the first who recog-
nized the fibres of the brain, that is to say the most
important part of the structure of this organ.
"It is certain," says Stenon, "and demonstrable
to the eye as well as to the reason, that the heart
is a muscle, that it is all a muscle and nothing but
a muscle ; so that it can be neither the organ of
internal heat, nor the seat of the soul; nor does it
produce the vital spirits, or the blood, or give
origin to any other humor whatever. 1
(1) "Si certuin est, quod certum esse sensuum ope adjuta
evincit ratio, in corde nihil desiderari quod musculo datum,
nee quod musculo denegatum in corde inveniri, non erit cor
amplius sui generis substantia, adeoque nee certte substantise,
ut ignis calidi innati, animse sedes, nee certi humoris, ut san-
guinis, generator, nee spirituum quorumdam vitalium pro-
ductor." (De musculis specimen, p. 523, in Mangeti Biblioth.
anat.) Stenon's book is dated 1664.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 93
Lower and the coloration of the blood by the lungs; or,
rather, by the air.
Lower's book upon the heart is short, full, excel-
lent. 1 His was one of the finest minds ever de-
voted to physiology. His advances are sure, his
views clear, his experiments judicious.
It is evident that the right ventricle has the same
structure as the left ; the same conclusions may there-
fore be drawn from the one as from the other.
On examining now the blood of the vena cava, i. e.
blood which has not yet traversed the right ven-
tricle, and the blood of the pulmonary artery which
is just leaving the ventricle, it will be found that
they are both just alike; they are both the same
blood, the venous or black blood. 2
If the trachea of a living animal be tied so that
the lung can receive no more air, then the blood
of the carotid artery will be black like that of the
jugular vein; i. e. blood which has just come from
the left ventricle is the same as that which has not
yet arrived there. 3
(1) It appeared in 1669.
(2) " Quum par sit utriusque ventriculi officium
quidni color in dextro pariter imimitari debeat? At certd
constat sanguinem ex arteria pulmonali eductum venoso per
omnia similem esse, crassamentum ejus nempe obscuri coloria
est (Tractatus de corde, etc., edition of 1740, p. 184.)
(3) " Quinimo nee a sinistro cordis ventriculo novum hunc
ruborem sanguini impertiri certissimo hoc expereminto con-
94 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
If, in a dog which has just expired, the yet fluid
blood be pushed from the vena cava into the lungs,
and at the same time air be forced into them, the
blood of the pulmonary veins immediately becomes
red. 1
Finally, and this is an experiment which is only
surpassed in beauty by the finest of Bichat's, if the
thorax of a living dog be ojpened the lungs collapse,
receive no more air, and the blood of the pulmo-
nary veins is black; if air be forced in, the blood
becomes red; if the insufflation be suspended it
again becomes black, and again changes to red on
the insufflation being recommenced. 2
fici potest: si nimirum aspera arteria in collo nudata
discindatur, et immisso subere arete desuper ligetur, ne quid
aeris in pulmones ingrediatur, sanguis ex arteria cervical!
simul discissa effluens, totus venosus pariter et atri
coloris apparebit, non aliter quam si vena jugulari pertusa
profusus fuisset " (p. 184.)
(1) (: Postrem6, ne quis ultra vel dubitandi locus supersit,
experiri animum subiit in cane strangulate, postquam sensus
illfim et vita omnis deseruissent, an sanguis adhuc fluidus, e*
vena cava in dextrum cordis ventriculum et pulmones impul-
sus, pariter floridus per venam pneumonicam totus rediret;
itaque propulso sanguine, atque insufflatis simul pul-
monibus, exspectationi 'eventus optime respondebat, quippe
seque purpureus in patinam excipiebatur, ac si ex arteria
viventis effusus fuisset." (p. 185.)
(2) "Expertus sum sanguinem, qui totus venosi instar sub-
nigricante colore pulmones intrarat, arteriosum omnino et
floridum ex illis rediisse, si enim abscissa anteriore parte pec-
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 95
It is, therefore, in the lungs alone, and by the air
alone, that the black blood is changed into red;
and of the four principal errors of Galen, not one
now remained. All four were destroyed, and the
destruction of each is the glory of a different man.
Aselli taught us that the chyle is carried by special
vessels and not by veins ; Pecquet that it goes to
the heart and not to the liver ; Stenon that the
heart is a simple muscle and not the originator of
toris, et folle in asperam arteriam immisso, pulmonibus conti-
nenterinsufflatis, vena pneumonica prope auriculam sinis-
tram pertundatur, sanguis totus purpureus et floridus in admo-
tum vasculum exsiliet; atque quamdiu pulmonibus recens usque
aer hoc modo suggeritur sanguis ad plures uncias. imo libras,
per totum coccineus crumpet, non aliter quam si ex arteria
vulnerata exciperetur " (p. 186.) "One of the best
methods," says Bichat, " to judge of the change of color of the
blood, I believe is the one of which I make use. It consists
first in adapting to the divided trachea a stop-cock which
may be opened or closed at pleasure; and then in opening an
artery, such as the carotid, or the femoral, so as to observe
the alterations of color in the blood as it flows out." (Re-
cherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mart. De lamort des vr-
ganes par celle du poumon, art. viii. i.) " 1. Adapt a tube with
a stop-cock to the trachea exposed and divided ; 2. Open the
abdomen so as to expose the intestines, mesentery, etc.
3. Close the stop-cock. At the end of two or three minutes
the bright red tint which enlivens the whiteness of the peri-
toneum and which this membrane derives from the numerous
vessels distributed over it, will become dark and dull, and
this change may be repeated again and again by opening and
closing the stop-cock." (Ibid., art. vi., g ii.)
96 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
heat; Lower demonstrated that it is in the lungs and
not in the liver that the elaboration of the blood is
completed, and the conversion of the black blood
into red takes place.
So much for the four principal errors of the
theory of Galen. There remain only two acces-
sory ones that of the spirits and that of innate
heat. Let us give a rapid glance at the manner of
their fall.
The spirits.
We know that of Galen's three kinds of
spirit the moderns only adopted one, the animal
spirits. "The ancients admitted," says Bordeu,
"three sorts of spirits; and it is not easy to -under-
stand by what fatality the natural and the vital
have not been able to maintain themselves and
have succumbed, while the animal still subsist." 1
Begging Bordeu's pardon, nothing is easier to un-
derstand. It was because Descartes introduced
the animal spirits into his philosophy, and did not
introduce the others. The fortune of the animal
spirits in modern times depended entirely upon the
philosophy of Descartes. As long as that philoso-
phy existed they remained in being and when it
fell they fell with it. I say when this philosophy
(1) Recherches anatomiques sur la position des glandes el stir
leur action, $ xxxiv.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 97
fell, I speak of the exterior of the philosophy, of
its forms, of its applications, of its phrases", of the
ideas it borrowed from imperfect physiology and
physics; for, in regard to the essential, the founda-
tion its spirit and its method it can not fall.
Far from it; the more we study man, or that which
is really man, the reason, the soul, the more we shall
appreciate the truth of the philosophy of Des-
cartes, and the we shall feel its greatness and
its grandeur.
Innate heat.
Of all the errors of Galen, or, to speak more
correctly, of ancient physiology (for this is not
alone Galen's error, but that of Aristotle, of Hip-
pocrates, and of all antiquity), that which lasted the
longest was the one in regard to innate heat. This
only gave way before modern chemistry, and then,
not immediately.
In spite of the miracles of modern chemistry,
the decomposition of the air, the separation of the
air into respirable and non-respirable portions,
showing in the respirable element the cause of
the coloration of the blood, and in the decomposi-
tion of the air by respiration the source of animal
heat, more than one old physiologist resisted still.
Fabre, an ingenious physiologist, but of narrow
ideas, (and of which the least worthy is the one
which Broussais has borrowed from him, of irrita-
98 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
tion being the sole cause of all the phenomena of
life,) Fabre held that animal heat was the simple
effect of irritability and had for its focus the heart,
the most irritable organ of the economy. 1
Barthez, a profound physiologist, but one "who
saw the origin of physical phenomena in meta-
physical causes, 2 maintained animal heat to be an
affection of the vital principle, a generative affec-
tion producing the heat, 3 and that the respired air
cooled the blood.*
Fouquet, the great founder of chemical study
in France, said of these new theories : " They are
the work of youngsters and I am now so old that
it is not worth while to make myself acquainted
with them." How many men have been able to
(1) "I believe we are able to attribute animal heat to irri-
tability." (Essai sur lesfacultes de I'ame, 1787, p. 40.) "The
heart, on account of the multitude of its fibres, and the force
of their contraction, should be regarded as the principal focus
from whence emanates that heat which the blood carries to
all parts of the body. (Ibid. p. 41.)
(2) Upon this vice of philosophy, see the author's Histoire
des travaux de Buffon^ and his Histoire de Fcntendle.
(3) "L'affection du principe vital, qui est regenera-
trice de la chaleur" (Nouveauz elements de la science de
Fhomme, Paris, 1806, t. i., p. 304.)
(4) A la suite des effets que 1'air, nouvellement respire,
produit a la surface des vaisseaux. aeriens du poumon qu'il
rafraichit." (Ibid. p. 303.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 99
speak thus! And we must add that this Fouquet,
so hostile to modern ideas was an ardent supporter
of the doctrines of the ancients. Seated in his
professional chair he never pronounced the name
of Hippocrates without uncovering his head ! The
erudite of all kinds resemble a little La Bruyere,
they have seen even the Tower of Babel but
have not visited Versailles.
9
IV.
SARPI AND THE VALVES OF THE VEINS.
I have said but a word of Sarpi and that is not
enough.
The learned author of a very remarkable analy-
sis of the work of M. Bianchi Giovini upon Sarpi,
published in the London and Westminster Review,
for April, 1838, has re-opened a question which
seemed to have been decided. 1
First, M. Giovini produces in favor of Sarpi a
new document ; second, the author to whom I
allude, after having placed Farvey's fame in safety
(which was his first care,) becomes much less care-
ful in regard to the others, and appears even too
compliant when the question is only in regard to
Fabricius ab Acquapendente.
I have already said that the discovery of the
circulation of the blood does not belong to any
single man. This grand discovery was only made
little by little and part by part ; more than twenty
anatomists took part in it.
Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the
blood; but he came from Padua, where Falri-
(1) See on page 33 the opinion of a master in Italian criti-
cism, Tiraboschi.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 101
cms, "who had discovered the valves of the veins,
was his teacher ; in this same university of Padua
where were formed the germs of all Harvey's 1
ideas, Realdo Columbus, who discovered the pul-
monary circulation, was but a short time before
professor; and Padua is not far from Pisa, where
Csesalpinus, by the light of genius caught sight
of the pulmonary circulation, and by a brighter
flash of the same divine fire saw the general circu-
lation.
In the discovery of the circulation, the point of
difficulty was to unite the diverse observations suc-
cessively made, or so to speak, the different pieces,
into one whole ; the difficulty was to comprehend
the phenomena and the whole of the mechanism
united together ; and it is because Harvey was the
first who clearly and completely comprehended this
whole that the glory has remained his.
Sarpi.
There are just two questions relative to Sarpi :
the first is to ascertain which of the two, Fabricius
or he, discovered the valves of the veins ; the
(1) Harvey has left two fundamental works, one on the
circulation and the other on generation: in the first he starts
from the discovery of the valves made by Fabricius, and in
the second, from the labors of this same Fabricius upon the
formation of the egg and of the foetus : De formato faetu et De
formations ovi et pulli.
102 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
second is to learn whether he understood the circu-
lation. According to his partisans he discovered
the veins and was acquainted with the circulation ;
but in my opinion, he neither discovered the one
nor knew anything of the other.
Sarpi and the valves of the veins.
It has been said then that Sarpi discovered the
valves of the veins. But who says this? It is
Father Fulgence, the companion, the friend, the
enthusiastic biographer of Father Sarpi.
" Many very learned men and very eminent phy-
sicians are living yet," Fulgence tells us, " who
know very well that the discovery of the valves
does not belong to Fabricius ab Acquapendente,
but to the Father S.. ma dal Padre, who reflecting
on the gravity of the blood, came to think that it
could not remain suspended, as it is in the veins,
if it was not supported by some dam or obstacle,
and thereupon, he set about making researches and
discovered the valves and their use." 1
(1) Sono ancora viventi molti eruditissimi e eminentissimi
medici, tra quest! Santorio Santorio e Pietron Asselineo,
francese, che sanno che non fu speculatione, ne inventione
dell' Acquapendente, ma dal Padre, il quale considerando la
gravita del sangue, venne in parere che non potesse stare
sospeso nelle vene, senza che vi fosse argine che lo ritenesse,
e chiusure, ch' aprendosi'et risserrandosi gli dassero il flusso s
e 1'equilibrio necessario alia vita. E con questo natural
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 103
Now then what is this use ? According to Ful-
gence, that is to say according to Sarpi, it is " not
alone to prevent the blood by its weight distending
the veins and thus causing varices, but by modera-
ting its too rapid course and limiting its quantity
to prevent it from destroying the heat of the parts
which it should nourish. 1 "
We must at least conclude then, before quitting
Fulgence, that Sarpi did not understand the use
of the valves. The valves prevent a retrograde
flow of blood, but present no obstacle to its rapid
advance, and it is scarcely necessary for me to add
that the parts are not nourished by the blood of
the veins.
After Fulgence comes (jrassendi.
" I had no sooner informed him," Gassendi tells
us in his life of Peiresc, " that William Harvey, an
English physician, had just published a very re-
markable book upon the continual passage of the
blood from the veins into the arteries and again
from the arteries into the veins by imperceptible
anastomoses, and that among other arguments to
giuditio si pose & tagliare con isquisitissima osservatione,
et ritrovo-le valvule, e gl' usi loro (Opere del Padre Paolo
deir Ordlne dei Servi, etc., 1687: Vita dal Padre, p. 44.)
(1) "Perchenon solamente prohibiscono ch'el sangue per
la gravita non dilati le vene, a guisa di varice, ma anco a, fine che
con troppo impeto scorrendo, et in soverchia quantita, non soffo-
chiilcalordelle parti \ che desso si debbono nutrire." (Ibid, p 45.)
104 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
confirm this passage, he makes great use of the
valves of the veins, of which he himself had
learned something from Fabricius ab Acquapen-
dente, than recollecting that Father Sarpi, Servite >
was the first inventor, he would have the book and
seek out the valves and know all the rest." 1
Thus then it is Gassendi who reminds Pciresc that
Fabricius has spoken to him of the valves of the
veins, and he, Peiresc, recollects that it is Sarpi
who has discovered them. But who told Peiresc
this? Apparently it was not Fabricius. Might it
not have been Father Fulgence ?
From this "remembrance" of Peiresc let us pass
to another point, to some few words written by
the rapid and prolix pen of Thomas Bartholin.
Bartholin was traveling, and was in Padua at that
time ; he wrote from that place to Jean Walaeus,
professor at Leyden ; of course there was much to
write from Padua. He related then, " that finally
he had heard from Vesting the secret of the dis-
(1) Cum simul monuisscm Gulielmnm Harvrcum, medicum
Anglum, edidisse prneclarum libruin de successione sanguinis
ex venis in arterias et ex arteriis rursus in venas per imper-
ceptas anastomoses, inter cetera vero argumenta confirmasse
illam ex venarum valvulis, de quibus ipse inaudierat aliquid
ab Acquapendente, et quaruin inventorem primum Sarpium
Servitam meminerat, ideo statim voluit et librum habere,
et eas valvulas explorare et alia internoscere... ( Viri illustrit
Nicolai Claudii Fabricii de Peiresc Vita per Petrum Gassendum
1641, p. 222.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 105
covery of the circulation of the blood, a secret
which was not to be revealed to anybody ; nulli
revellandum; to-wit : that it was discovered by
Father Paul, a Venetian, (from whom also Fabri-
cius had derived the discovery of the valves of the
veins) as he had seen by a manuscript of Father
Paul's which was at Venice, in the possession of
his successor and disciple Father Fulgence." 1
Always Father Fulgence !
Again, why should not this secret be confided
to any one ? Why even was it a secret at all ?
It certainly was not a sin to have discovered the
circulation of the blood or the valves of the veins.
Finally, why reveal it if it ought not to be re-
vealed ? Above all, why wait until after Fabricius'
death before making this disclosure ? 2
Fabricius did not await the death of Sarpi before
saying publicly and plainly that he had discovered
the valves. " What first astonishes," says he,
" is that these valves have so long escaped anatom-
ists, ancient as well as modern, and so entirely
(1) De circulatione Harvejana secretum mihi aperuit Ves-
lingius, nulli revelandum; esse nempe inventum Patris Pauli,
veneti (a quo de ostiolis venarum sua habuit Acquapendens,)
ut ex ipsius autographo vidit, quod Venetiis servat P. Fulgen-
tius, illus discipulis et successor Patavio. 30 oct. 1642 >
(Thom. Barthol. Epist. med. cent, i, epist. xxvi.)
(2) The letter of Thomas Bartholin is dated in 1642, and the
death of Fabricius took place in 1619.
106 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
escaped them that no mention was made of them,
no one had seen them, until the year 1574 when
I observed them for the first time "with great joy:
summd cum letitid." l
When Fabricius wrote this Sarpi was twenty-
two years old. 2 He lived forty-nine years after
Fabricius had made this declaration, yet neither he
himself, nor Father Fulgence, nor any other of
his friends, ever raised his voice against Fabricius,
but all of them as we have just seen, kept their
secret close, and advised its farther keeping ;
they revealed it, however, but unhappily not until
after the death of Fabricius.
Add to this, and this is a decisive point, that
Fabricius was not only a consummate anatomist
and a superior man of science but he was eminently
an honest man. Harvey called him a venerable
old man ; venerabilis senex. Says he, " it was the
illustrious Jerome Fabricius ab Acquapendente, a
most skillful anatomist and venerable old man, who
first saw in the veins the membranous valves of
sigmoid or semi-lunar shape." 3
(1) See page 32 ,note 2.
(2) He was born in 1552 and died in 1623.
(3) " Clarissimus Hieronym. Fab. ab Acquapendente, peri-
tissimus anatomicus et venerabilis senex, primus in venis
membraneas valvulas delineavit figura, sigmo'ides, vel semil-
unares portiunculas tunicse interioris venarum, eminentes et
tenuissimas... (JSzerc. anat. de motu cordis et sanguinis, cap.
xiii.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 107
The friends of Sarpi reckon as many as five
witnesses for him ; first, Fulgence, then Peiresc,
next Vesling, then Thomas Bartholin, and finally,
Jean Walseus. But if I except the testimony of
Peiresc, of which I do not well see the origin, all
the others are but one. For it is Fulgence who in
showing the manuscript of Sarpi to Vesling con-
fides to him the secret ; it is Vesling who trans-
mitted this secret to Thomas Bartholin, and it is
Bartholin who commuicates it to Jean Walseus.
There remain then two distinct pieces of evi-
dence that of Peiresc and that of Fulgence.
To these two I oppose two others; in the first
place, the testimony of Harvey which I have just
cited, a man more competent to give evidence upon
the question at issue than Peiresc or Fulgence,
and in the second place that of Gaspard Bauhin,
the immortal author of Pinax, like Harvey, a
pupil of Fabricius : in his Traite d'anatomic, pub-
lished in 1592, he thus expresses himself; " we
find no one who has made mention of these valves
before the celebrated Fabricius ab Acquapendente,
our master in anatomy, who eighteen years ago,
demonstrated them for the first time in the amphi-
theatre of Padua. 1
(1) Neminem legimus qui earum fecerit mentionem ante cl.
anatomicum Hieronymum Fabricium ab Acquapendente, pata-
vinum, anatomicum proeceptoiem nostrum, qui ante annosocto-
decim eas in patavino theatro demonstravit, et ipsimet demon-
strari vidimus ab eodem ante annos quatuordecim." Anat. lib. ii.
10
108 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Morgagni, the most learned historian and at the
same time the most careful critic anatomy has ever
had, Morgagni knew, examined and weighed all
this pretended testimony which is advanced, and
the whole of it has not affected his judgment. He
concluded, as I have concluded, that the discovery
of the valves of the veins was not made by Sarpi
but by Fabricius. 1
Sarpi and the circulation of the blood.
Those who admit these evidences which I have
been combatting, so long as they relate to Fabri-
cius, and believe themselves able to reject them
when they concern Harvey, are laboring under a
singular delusion. The witnesses cannot be sepa-
rated.
"The discovery of the circulation," says Vesling,
"is an invention of Father Paul's, from whom Fa-
bricius also derived the existence of the valves."
"In this century," says Jean Walaeus, "the in-
comparable Paul, Servite, became acquainted with
the valves of the veins, afterward publicly demon-
strated by the great anatomist Fabricius, and from
their disposition he inferred the movement of the
blood. Instructed by this Servite, ab hoc Servitd
edoctus, the learned William Harvey studied this
(1) See the fifteenth of the Letters of Morgagni upon
Valsalva. (Epist. anat. duodeviginti ad script, pertinent Val-
talvce.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 109
movement farther and published it in his own
name." 1
How can we separate Harvey from Fabricius?
And note that while this was written Harvey still
lived, and note well, too, that to his honor he had
the good sense not to take notice of it. As we
have seen before, Riolan was the only one of his
adversaries to whom he responded.
When the enemies of Harvey became convinced
that he would not reply to them, they ceased their
attacks ; they became tired of a fruitless warfare.
And this same Thomas Bartholin, who, in his let-
ter to Jean Walseus, dated in 1642, revealed the
famous secret, wrote some years after, in 1673, as
follows :
"In the last century Csesalpinus divined some-
thing of the circulation ; but the honor of the first
discovery, laus primce inventionis, is due to Har-
vey, an Englishman. It is true that Father Ful-
gence found something relating to it in the papers
(1) "Hoc seculo denuo vir incomparabilis Paulus, Servita,
venetus, valvularum in venis fabricam observavit accuratius,
quam magnus anatomicus Fabricius ab Acquapendente postei
edidit, et ex ea valvularum constitutione aliisque experimen-
tis hunc sanguinis moturn deduxit, egrioque scripto asseruit,
quod etiamnum intelligo apud venetos asservari Ab
hoc Servita edoctus vir doctissimus Gulielmus Harvejus san-
guinus hunc motum accuratius indagavit, inventis auxit, pro-
bavit firmius, et suo divulgavit nomine." (De motu chi/li et
isj etc.)
110 CIRCULATION OP THE BLOOD.
of Paul Sarpi, which has given birth to the conjec-
ture that Sarpi opened the way for Harvey ; the
fact simply is that Harvey, as I have learned from
his friends, was connected with Sarpi and commu-
nicated to him his thoughts concerning the move-
ment of the blood, and that the latter took and
preserved notes of the subject in his papers, accord-
ing to his custom. Everybody recognizes Harvey
as the author of the discovery." 1
Here then the tune is changed. In the letter of
Thomas Bartholin it is from Sarpi that Harvey ob-
tained the discovery ; and in the book of this same
Bartholin it is from Harvey that Sarpi learned
what he knew of it. After that rely upon secrets
and confidential relations for writing history !
I come now to the new document produced by
M. Bianchi-Giovini: it is one of Sarpi's letters.
Sarpi was a man of prodigious capacity; he had
(1) "Priori seculo Cassalpinus aliquid de e& (de circula-
tione) divinavit, sed clarius nostro seculo innotuit
Harvejo, anglo, cui primae inventionis, promulgationis et per
varia argumenta et experimenta probationis, prima laus me-
rit^ debetur Quamquam P. Fulgentius in schedis Pauli
Sarpae, veneti, aliquid hac de re invenerit, unde suspicandi
orta est occasio Sarpam Harvejo viam monstrasse ; sed, sicut
ab amicis Harveji accepi, familiaris hie illi fuit, unde cum
has de sanguinis motu cogitationes illi communicasset, Sarpa
in schedis retulit more suo, posterisque ansam dubitandi sub-
ministravit. At Harvejo omnes applaudunt, circulationis auc-
tori." (Tbomaj Bartholini, Anatome, etc.; Libell, de venis :
Leyde, 1673.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. Ill
that perspicacity which divines all things ; he was
capable of discovering all things. But this is not
a reason that he discovered anything, and we can
not therefore agree with the decision of Ful-
gence. 1
The following is the letter, or rather the frag-
ment of a letter, for it is but a fragment, but one
which is striking from the marks it presents of
superior penetration: "As to your exhortations,
I should say to you that I am no longer, as for-
merly, in a position which permits me to charm
my leisure hours in making anatomical observa-
tions upon lambs, goats, cows and other animals :
could I do so, I should be at this time more desi-
rous than ever of repeating some of them, on ac-
count of the noble present you have made me of
the great and very useful work of the illustrious
Vesalius. There is really a great analogy between
the things already remarked and noted by me in
regard to the movement of the blood in the animal
body, and to the structure as well as the use of the
valves, and what I find with pleasure indicated,
although less clearly, in Book vii., chap. xix. of
(1) " Eti Sarpius fuit ingenii vi, eo studio, ea, industrial, so-
lertia sagacitate, ut tametsi in omnibus propemodum scientiis
atque artibug, non ea omnia quno ipsi in vita ista (the Life of
Sarpi by Fulgence) tribuuntur (nihil autem fere non tribui-
tur) primus deprehendere posset." (Morgagni: xv.
Lettre sur Valsalva.)
112 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
this work. It is to be inferred from what appears
there, that by the insufflation of fresh air into the
trachea of the dying, or of those in whom the vital
functions appear to have ceased, we can succeed in
restoring to their blood the movement it has lost
and in prolonging life some time. If it is thus,
and we can scarcely doubt it after the experiments
of this great anatomist, I am more than ever con-
firmed in the opinion that the air which we respire
contains a principle or agent capable of vivifying
the sanguineous fluid, and of reestablishing its move-
ment in those who have been surprised by mortal
faintings or asphyxiated by the pernicious vapors
which exhale from tombs, an agent, in a
word, such as is alluded to in the Scriptures, in
these words : anima omnis carnis (that is to say,
of every living thing) in sanguine est, of which also
many ancient philosophers have spoken, and nearer
our own times, Marsile Ficin, Pic de la Mirandole,
etc., etc."
Thus writes Sarpi ! He knew of the existence
of the valves ; he meditated upon the movement of
the blood; from some experiments of Vesalius upon
the insufflation of air into the trachea to maintain
the movement of the heart he concluded the pres-
ence in the air of a principle vivifying, active, pen-
etrating; a vital air; our oxygen: he concludes
and seems to predict, for all this is original and
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 113
unpremeditated with him, 1 he predicts the part
which this agent, still unknown, will play in ani-
mating the movements of the heart when about
ceasing, and in restoring the asphyxiated to life.
What sagacity, what perspicuity, what penetration,
and what power has the human mind in some of
the chosen of God !
If in these few lines Sarpi had said to us : "I dis-
covered the valves," in my estimation all would be
settled; I would proclaim Sarpi the author of the
discovery of the valves ; genius has always a right
to be believed; but Sarpi contents himself with
saying that he knew of them, and that he had at
times written some notes upon their structure and
their use; and farther, the fragment of the letter
in which he speaks of this is evidently posterior to
the publication of the discovery of Fabricius.
The fragment is without date; but to me it
appears easy to see that it could not have been
(1) In contrast with the studies of Vesalius which were
strictly experimental. In order to examine the movements
of the heart Vesalius opened the chest, and when he saw life
about to be extinguished he restored the animal and kept it
alive by artificial respiration "Ut vero vita animali
quodammodo restituatur, foramen in asperao arterise caudice
tentandum est, cui canalis ex calamo aut arundine indetur,
isque inflabitur, ut pulmo assurgat, ipsumque animal quodam-
modo aerem ducat: levi cnim inflatu in vivo hoc animali pul-
mo tantum quanta thoracis erat cavitas intumet, corque vires
denuo assumit, et motus ipsus differentia pulchre evariat."
( Vesalii, De corp. hum. fair., lib. vii., ch. xix.)
114 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
written before the demonstration of the valves by
.Fabricius, and this point will suffice for the present.
"I am no longer, as formerly, in a position," etc.
says Sarpi. Now if this formerly be placed at
four or five years, and it is difficult to estimate it
at less, Sarpi, who was only twenty-two years old
in 1574 when Fabricius publicly demonstrated the
valves, could not have been more than seventeen
or eighteen at the time when he is said to have
discovered them, an age at which little thought is
spent on the profound mechanism of the animal
body, or on one of the most hidden structures of
the organism. The fact is little probable. 1 Sarpi
was acquainted with the existence of the valves,
but he did not discover them.
(1) But, it may be said, Fabricius himself quotes Sarpi in
another place and with great praise. The case is very differ-
ent; firstly, the observation for which Fabricius quotes Sarpi
was not made until much later; secondly, it was made at the
suggestion of Fabricius; thirdly, it was not a quotation con-
cerning profound anatomy or hidden stauctures; it was sim-
ply in regard to the different action of the iris under a strong
and under a feeble light "Re igitur cum amico quo-
dam nostro communicata ille tandem forte id observavit, scili-
cet nonmodo in cato, sed in homine et quocumque animali,
foramen uvese in majori contrahi luce, in minor! dilatari.
Quod arcanum observatum est, et mihi significatum a Rev.
Patre Magistro Paulo veneto, Ordinis ut appellant Servorum
Theologo, philosophoque insigni, sed mathematicarum dis-
ciplinarum pracipueque optices, maxim<; studioso, quern hoc
loco honoris gratia nomino " (De ocuh, etc., pars 111,
cap. vi.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 115
Farther, in regard to the circulation ; of that he
knew nothing at all.
"There is a grand analogy," says he, "between
the things observed and noted by me as to the
movement of the blood and the use of the valves,
and what I find indicated, although less clearly, in
Vesalius." But Vesalius knew nothing of the
valves, and of the movement of the blood only
that which takes place in the arteries, 1 and he was
completely deceived as to the course of the blood
in the veins: he says, "the blood is carried into
the whole body by the veins." 2 He should have
said just the reverse it is carried into the differ-
ent parts of the body by the arteries and brought
back from them by the veins. If Sarpi understood
the true course of the blood, how is it that he did
not perceive this error of Vesalius? And if he did
perceive it how could he say that there was a great
(1) Galen had plainly proved that the arteries contain
blood as we have already shown ; but this had been forgotten
and it was universally believed in the schools that the arteries
only contained vital spirits. Vesalius again proved that the
arteries contain blood: " atque ita observatur in arte-
riis sanguinem natura contineri, si quando arteriam in vivis
aperimus." (De corp. hum.fabr., p. 568.)
(2) " Ceterum in venarum usu inquirendo, vix quoque vivo-
rum sectione opus est: quum in mortuis affatim discamus eas
sanguinem per universum corpus deferre, et partem aliquam
non nutriri in qua insignis vena in vulneribus prsescinditur."
(Ibid.)
116 CIRCULATION OF TIIE BLOOD.
analogy between the ideas of Vesalius and his own?
Us ideas were no more advanced nor any more cor-
rect than those of Vesalius.
There is just cause for surprise here. For while
Sarpi wrote at Padua these uncertain lines in re-
gard to the circulation, Caesalpinus wrote at Pisa
this sentence so precise and so clear : " The blood
conducted to the heart by the veins receives there
its last perfection, and this perfection acquired it
is carried by the arteries to the whole body." 1
Once again, then, could the circulation be better
understood and defined? The true predecessor of
Harvey was not Sarpi but Csesalpinus, and there
is nothing to conceal about it; the secret may be
revealed to the whole world.
Harvey and the true use of the valves.
Fabricius did not see the use of the valves. He
believed that they only served to prevent the too
great distension of the thin coats of the veins : 2 it
(1) "In animalibus videmus alimentum per venas duci ad
cor tanquam ad officinam caloris insiti, et, adepta inibi ultima
perl'ectione, per arterias in universum corpus distribui."
( De plantis, lib. i., cap. ii., p. 3, Florence, 1583.)
(2) "Dicere procul dubio tuto possumus ad prohi-
bendam quoque venaruin distensionem fuisse ostiola a Summo
Opifice fabrefacta : distendi autem ac dilatari facile potuis-
sent venae, cum ex membranosa substantia eiique simplici ac
tenui sint conflatoe " (Fabr. ab Acquap: De venarum
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 117
is for this reason, he says, that the arteries, having
very thick coats, do not have valves. 1
Harvey was perfectly right, then, when he said
that nobody before him, Harvey, had known the
the use of the valves? Upon this point it is neces-
sary to read and re-read all his thirteenth chapter,
which is the chapter of his genius. Fabricius, who
believed that the blood ran from the heart to the
extremities in the veins, concluded that the use of
the valves was to moderate its current, and prevent
its pouring into the inferior veins, accumulating
there, distending them, etc., etc.
You do not see all the import of your discovery,
Harvey says to him; you believe that the valves
limit themselves to moderating the course of the
(1) " Arteriis autem ostiola non fuere necessaria, neque ad
distensionem prohibendam propter tunicae crassitiem ac robur
" (Ibid.)
(2) " Harum valvularum usum inventor non estmssecutus,
neque alii, qui dixerunt, ne pondere deorsum sanguis in infe-
riora subito ruat. Sunt namque in jugularibus deorsum spec-
tantes, et sanguinem sursum prohibentes ferri: nam ubique
spectant a radicibus venarum versus cordis locum "
(Exercit. anatom. de mortu cordis, etc. cap. xiii.) " If you at-
tempt," says Fabricius, " to force the blood downward you
will plainly see it arrested in its course by the veins, and by
no other means was I conducted to their discovery: Si enim
premere, aut deorsum fricando adigere sanguinem per venas
tentes, cursum istius ab ipsis ostiolis intercipi, remorarique
aperte videbis: neque enim aliter ego in hujusmodi notitiam
sum deductus." (De venarum ostiolis.)
118 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
blood ; they do much more, they'oppose themselves
completely to any flow in the direction you sup-
pose, and compel it to pursue an opposite course.
Remark, I pray you, that they are all directed to-
ward the heart; they constrain the blood, then, to
flow always toward the heart, 1 to turn toward itself,
to return to the point from which it set out ; to
flow back by the veins to the heart from which it
came by the arteries.
That is the circulation, Fabricius, and it is the
valves that demonstrate it.
Harvey and his predecessors.
The predecessors of Harvey are Fabricius, who
discovered the valves, and Coesalpinus, who so well
described the general circulation; 2 this same CSG-
salpinus, who not less clearly described the pul-
monary circulation; 3 and Realdo Columbus, who
(1) " Adeo ut venae patentes et apertse sint regre-
dienti sanguini ad cor, progredienti vero a corde omnino oc-
clusas." (Exercit. anal, de morlu. cordis, etc., cap. xii.)
(2) See page 29 for the proof of his having been the first to
call attention to the swelling of the veins below a ligature.
(3) "Idcirco pulmo per venam arteriis similem ex dextro
cordis ventriculo fervidum hauriens sanguinem, eumque per
anastomosim arteriaj venali reddens, qua in sinistrum cordis
ventriculum tendit, transmisso interim aere frigido per as-
perse arteriac canales, qui juxti, arteriam venalem protendun-
tur, non tamen osculis communicantes, ut putavit Galenus,
solo tactu temporal. Iliac sauguinis circulalioni ex dextro
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 119
saw the pulmonary circulation before Csesalpinus,
and Servetus who saw it before Columbus.
Nemesius, bishop of Emesa.
I limit myself here to the consideration of two
or three points already developed in the preceding
chapters.
It is certain that Servetus discovered the pul-
monary circulation; but it is equally certain that
the absurd book in which this beautiful discovery
was published, was burned almost as soon as it was
printed. Servetus did not influence any of his
successors.
In the order of dates, then, Columbus is the first ;
then comes Csesalpinus, then Fabricius and then
Harvey.
It has been said that Servetus might have de-
rived some assistance from Nemesius, bishop of
Emesa. 1 It is a mistake. Servetus did not influ-
ence any one, nor did any one influence him.
cordis ventriculo per pulmones in sinistrum ejusdem ventri-
culum optime respondent ea quoe ex dissectione apparent.
Nam duo sunt vasa in dextrum ventriculum desinentia, duo
etiam in sinistrum: duorum autem unum intromittit tantum,
alteruin educit, membranis eo ingenio constitutis." (Qucest.
perpatetica, lib. v., cap. iv.)
(1) " These views he might possibly have borrowed
from a work of Nemesius, entitled De natura hominis
This bishop explains the phenomena of the circulation of the
blood like Servetus." (Biog. univ. art. Scrvet.)
120 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Nemesius did not 'say a word upon the pulmo-
nary circulation, so clearly explained by Servetus;
he spoke of the pulse, of animal heat, of the vital
spirits, and wrote of all of them as Galen wrote.
He followed Galen in everything. 1 The chief merit
(1) "Pulsuum motus, qui vitalis facultas dicitur, initium
habet a corde, et maxime a sinistro ejus ventriculo, qui spira-
bilis appellatur, et innatum vitalemque calorem omni parti
corporis per arterias, ut jecur alimentum per venas, impertit.
Nam spiritus vitalis ab eo per arterias in totum corpus
dispergitur. Plerumque autem inter se hsec tria simul fin-
duntur: vena, arteria, nervus, e tribus initiis quoe animal
gubernant profecta. E cerebro, principle movendi et sen-
tkndi, nervus. E jecore, principle sanguinis et alentis facul-
tatis, vena, vas sanguinis. E corde, principio vitalis faculta-
tis, arteria, vas spiritus. Cum autem haac coeunt, mutuis inter
se commodis fruuntur. Vena enim pastum suppeditat nervis
et arterisD. Arteria venas calorem naturalem et spiritum
vitalem impertit. Unde neque arteria inveniri potest sine
tenui sanguine, neque vena sine spiritu, qui ad vaporis natu-
ram accedat. Diducitur autem vehementer, et contrahitur
arteria, harmonia quadam, et ratione, initio motus a corde
sumpto. Sed dum diducitur, a proximis vcnis vi trahit tenuem
sanguinem, cujus respiratio fit alimentum spiritui vitali.
Dum autem contrahitur, quod in se fuliginosi est per totum
corpus et occulta foramina exhaurit, quomodo cor, per os, et
nares, quidquid fuliginosi est, expirando sursum expellit."
This is all that Nemesius has said. This pulse, -which derives
its power from the heart this vital heat, -which has its origin
in the left ventricle these arteries which carry that vital heat
throughout the body these veins which distribute the aliment,
taking it always from the liver this tripod of life, the brain,
the heart and the liver, all this is derived from Galen, as we
have already shown. One or two lines seem to point to a
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 121
of Servetus is that he did not follow Galen but
contradicted him, that he saw differently from Ga-
len and saw well. "If any one will compare," (he
says with confidence,) "these things with what
Galen has written in Books vi. and vii. of his
Usage of Parts, he will comprehend the truth
which Galen did not perceive."
It is not worth while to deprive a man who has
had the misfortune to be burned, and to be burned
for an absurd book, of the signal honor of having
been the first to depart from Galen, to think for
himself, and to originate a discovery which was,
it is true, but an incomplete view, yet an incom-
plete view of phenomena the entire comprehension
of which has sufficed to immortalize the name of
Harvey.
communication between the veins and the arteries, <( Sed
dum diducitur (arteria) a proximis venis vi trahit sanguinem
Unde neque arteria inveniri potest sine tenui san-
guine, neque vena sine spiritu " But is this a com-
prehensible mechanism? Putting aside, too, the liver dis-
tributing aliment to all parts by the veins: " Jecur alimen-
tum per venas impertit, etc., etc. 1 '
V.
SERVETUS AND THE FORMATION OF THE SPIRITS.
Servetus discovered the pulmonary circulation.
The fact is clear. I have already quoted the beau-
tiful, the immortal passage in which he has described
it much better than was done several years after
him by Columbus and Csesalpinus. Leibnitz justly
alludes to Csesalpinus in these words : " Andrew
Cacsalpinus, physician, an author of merit, and
who approached nearest to the discovery of the
circulation of the blood after Michael Servetus."
There are two things here which surprise us.
How Servetus, elsewhere so confused, could be so
admirably lucid in a few pages. And, how a dis-
covery in physiology, in pure and profound phys-
iology, should be found in a book having for its
title " The Restitution of Christianity." 1
I had for a long time desired to enlighten myself
upon the latter point. The kindness of my friend
and learned confrere of the Institute, M. Magnin, 2
finally furnished me the opportunity. I have seen,
I have touched the book of Servetus. A copy of
(1) For the entire title of this work, see note 1, page 22.
(2) One of the conservators of the Imperial Library.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 123
this famous work is carefully preserved in our
library, and to complete all, this copy, the only
one perhaps now in existence, belonged to Colla-
don, one of the accusers raised up by the pitiless
Calvin against the unfortunate Servetus. It for-
merly belonged to the English physician, Richard
Mead, celebrated for his treatise on poisons.
Mead gave it to de Boze. It was afterwards pur-
chased by the Royal Library at a very high price.
In it Colladon has underscored the passages upon
which he accused Servetus. Finally, and as a last
mark of undeniable authority, several pages of this
unlucky volume are scorched and blackened by
fire. It was not saved from the pile where author
and work were burned together until after the
conflagration had commenced !
Let us turn aside from these frightful souvenirs.
We are only occupied here, thank God, with phys-
iology.
I must commence by informing those who are
carried away by their zeal for Harvey, and go
so far as to suggest that the passage concerning
the pulmonary circulation must have been intercal-
ated, that they are mistaken. There is no inter-
calation, no interpolation, no trickery. The passage
belongs entirely to Servetus, and nothing remains
but to submit. A long time before Harvey there
was a man of genius occupied with this great sub-
11
124: CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
ject of the circulation of the blood, and that man
was Servetus.
But how has Servetus managed to thrust a de-
scription of the pulmonary circulation into a work
on the Restitution of Christianity ?
When we cast a glance over the writings of
Servetus, which I aver I have not done until now,
we soon perceive what part he took in theology ;
he attached himself singly and obstinately to the
literal sense. He sought every where for the
literal meaning ; he accused everybody, and above
all Calvin, of not understanding it ; he accumula-
ted quotations to prove that he alone compre-
hended it.
It is not necessary to leave the subject before
us to find an example. The Scriptures say that
the soul is in the blood, that the soul is the blood
itself; anima est in sanguine; anima ipsa cst
sanguis.
.Since the soul is in the blood, says Servetus, to
know how the soul is formed it is necessary to
know how the blood is formed, and to learn this we
must see how it moves; and it is thus that in
writing on the restitution of Christianity he is con-
ducted to the formation of the soul, and from the
formation of the soul to that of the blood, and
from this to the pulmonary circulation.
But this is not all. From this same blood,
which furnishes the soul, the spirits are also
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 125
formed. Servetus explains successively the for-
mation of the blood, of the spirits, and of the soul,
and from all this there results a philosophy half of
which is theological, half physiological, extremely
singular from beginning to end, and which he calls
divine.
"In order that you may have, dear reader," he
says, " a complete explanation of the soul and the
spirits, I will add here a divine philosophy which
you will easily understand, if you have applied
yourself to anatomy." 1
He then commences to explain the formation of
the spirits. We have already seen what were Galen's
theories of their formation. Servetus did not cite
Galen but he copied him. He quoted and criti-
cised a certain Aphrodisaeus, a physician who lived
at the commencement of the sixteenth century.
Aphrodisaeus, he says, reckons three kinds of
spirits, the natural, the vital and the animal; but
there are not three kinds, there are only two, the
vital and animal. 2 The natural are the same as
(1) "Ut vero totam animse et spiritus rat ionem habeas,
lector, divinam hie philosophiam adjungam, quam facile
intelliges, si in anatome fueris exercitatus."
(2) "Tres spiritus vocat Aphrodisrcus, naturalis, vitalis efc
animalis Vere non sunt tres, sed duo spiritus dis-
tincti."
126 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
the vital. The vital spirits pass from the arteries
into the veins and are there called natural. 1
There are thus three principles : the blood, the
seat of which is the liver and the veins of the body,
the vital spirits, which are in the heart and arteries,
and the animal spirits, situated in the brain and in
the nerves. 2
It is from the blood contained in the liver that
the soul draws its first material by an admirable
elaboration; 3 and for this reason the soul is said
to be in the blood, to be the blood itself, that is to
say, the spirit of the blood*
But we must learn first how the vital spirits are
formed. They are formed by the mixture of air,
drawn in by respiration, with the blood which the
right ventricle sends to the left, a mixture which
(1) "Vitalis est spiritus qui per anastomoses ab arteriis
communicatur venis, in quibus dicitur naturalis."
(2) Primus ergo est sanguinis, cujus sedes est in hepate
et corporis venis. Secundus est spiritus vitalis, cujus sedes
est in corde et corporis arteriis. Tertius est spiritus animalis,
cujus sedes est in cerebro et corporis nervis.
(3) Ex hepatis sanguine est animrc materia per elabora-
tionem mirabilem.
(4) Hinc dicitur anima esse in sanguine, et anima ipsa esse
sanguis, id est spiritus sanguineus Non dicitur anima
priii cipaliter esse in parietibus cordis, aut in corpore ipso
cercbri, aut hepatis, sed in sanguine, ut docet ipse Deus :
Genes. 9, Lev. 11 et Deut. 12.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 127
takes place in the lungs; for it is not necessary
to believe as is commonly taught, says Servetus,
that the blood passes from one ventricle to the
other through the medium septum ; it can only
pass from one ventricle to the other by way of
the lungs ; l and here comes in that singular pas-
sage on the pulmonary circulation.
I have already quoted and already translated
the whole of this remarkable passage. I content
myself with alluding to it here, and must return
alas ! to blind Servetus to Servetus confused, and
absurd, no longer inspired by genius.
The vital spirits, formed in the lungs, pass
thence into the left ventricle and from there into
the arteries, in such a manner, however, that the
particles of greatest rarity tend always upwards,
and becoming more and more elaborated, arrive
at the plexus retiformis, situated at the base of
the brain, where from vital the spirits commence
to change into animal. 2 Finally, by a further and
(1) Ad quam rem est prius intelligenda substantialis ge-
neratio ipsius vitalis spiritus qui ex acre inspirato et subtil-
issimo sanguine componitur... Generator exfacta in pulmonibu
mixtione inspirati aeris cum elaborate sanguine, quern dexter
ventriculis cordis sinistro communicat Fit autem commu-
nicatio htfic, non parietem cordis medium, ut vulgo creditur,
sed magno artificio a dextro cordis ventriculo, longo per
pulmones ductu, agitatur sanguis subtilis
(2) " Ille itaque spiritus vitalis a sinistro cordis ventriculo
in arterias totius corporis deinde transfunditur, ita ut qui
128 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
complete elaboration the animal spirits pass from
the retiform plexus into the choroid plexus, and
it is in these little arteries that the soul resides 1
I omit, for I am in haste to finish, a host of
anatomical errors which Servetus joined to his
confused reasonings, and which besides are only
the anatomical and physiological errors of the
times in which he lived, such for instance as the
brain being without any peculiar function but only
serving as a pillar or cushion for the vessels of
the animal spirits ; 2 that the nerves are the contin-
uation of the arteries and constitute a third order
of vessels ; 3 that the ventricles of the brain com-
municate with the nasal fossae by the foraminae of
tenuior est superiora petat, ubi magis adhuc elaboratur,
proecipue in plexu retiformi, sub basi cerebri sito, in' quo ex
vitali fieri incipit animalis, ad propriam rationalis animae
Bedem. accedens."
(1) Iterum ille (spiritus animalis) fortius mentis ignca vi
tenuatur, elaboratur, et perficitur, in tenuissimis vasis, seu
capillaribus arteriis, quao in plexibus choroidibus sitte sunt,
et ipsissimam mentem continent.
(2) Ex his satis constat, mollem illam cerebri massam non
proprie esse rationalis animte sedem, cum frigida sit et sensus
expers, sed esse veluti pulvinum dictorum vasorum ne rum-
pantur, et custodem animalis spiritus
(3) Vasa ilia miraculo magno tenuissime contexta, tametsi
arterice dicantur, sunt tamen fines arteriarum, tendentes ad
originem nervorem, ministerio meningum. Est novum quod-
dam genus vasorum
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 129
the ethmoid bone, a pretended communication in
which Servetus saw a great advantage, for, in the
first place, the external air penetrates thus to the
soul and ventilates and replenishes it, 1 and in the
second place, the soul gets rid, through these
openings, of mucus which would have embar-
rassed its action, 2 and also escapes a very great
peril, for the evil spirit, spiritus nequam, which in.
its nature resembles air, enters sometimes by the
same route, by these same openings in the ethmoid
bone, and reaching the ventricles of the brain,
fights there incessantly against the soul and holds
it beseiged until the light of God appears and puts
it to fight, etc., etc. 3
I leave Servetus ; but I avail myself of the
opportunity which his doctrines have given me, to
(1) Facti sunt ventriculi ut ad spatia corum inania
penetrans per ossa ethmoide inspirati aeris portio ani-
malem intus contentum spiritum reficiat, et animam ventilet.
(2) Facti sunt ventriculi illi ad expurgamenta cerebri
recipienda, veluti cloacae, ut probant excreraenta ibi recepta,
et meatus ad palatum et nares... Et quando ventriculi
oplentur pituita, ut arterite ipsce choroidis ea immergantur,
turn subito generatur apoplexia.
(3) Spiritus nequam, cujus potestas est aeris, una cum in-
spirato a nobis acre, lacunas illas libere ingreditur, ut ubi
cum spiritu nostro, intra vasa ilia, velut in arce collocate,
jugiter, dimicat. Imo eum ita undique obsidet, ut vix illi
liceat respirare, nisi quum superveniens lux spiritus Dei
malum spiritum fugat.
130 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
cast a rapid glance at the long reign of spirits in
physiology.
The spirits played in ancient physiology the
same part which is filled now by properties, or
rather the forces. Hence their great importance.
Galen explained everything by means of the
spirits; and, as we have seen, he gave three
species of them, natural, vital and animal.
So much for antiquity. Reckoning from the
revival of letters, Galen's three kinds of spirits
were revived and existed up to the time of Descar-
tes. When Descartes came he took a fancy for
the animal spirits and rejected the others.
I have already quoted this paragraph from
Bordeu : " The ancients admitted three kinds of
spirits; it is not easy to understand by what
fatality the natural and the vital have been unable
to maintain themselves and have succumbed,
while the animal have survived. 1 " I have already
responded that Bordeu had not paid attention, [and
that nothing is easier to understand. The natural
and vital spirits gave way because Descartes
excluded them ; the animal spirits remained be-
cause Descartes adopted them. And it is always
thus. It is the writer who makes the fortune of
words.
Descartes, the powerful renovater of ideas, but
(1) Rech. anat. sur la position des glandes et leur ac-
tion. 34.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 131
who borrowed nevertheless, a great deal from the
ancients, combined the theory of the spirits, which
he took from Galen, with the circulation of the
blood which Harvey had just discovered. He was
the first Frenchman who fully understood and
clearly described this great phenomenon.
"All those," says, Descartes, "whom the au-
thority of the ancients has not entirely blinded,
and who have been willing to open their eyes for
the examination of the doctrines of Harvey touch-
ing the circulation of the blood, do not doubt that
all the veins and the arteries of the body are only
channels through which the blood runs unceas-
ingly, taking its course from the right cavity
of the heart by the arterial vein, the branches of
which are distributed throughout the lungs, and
joined to those of the venous artery, through
which it passes from the lung into the left side of
the heart ; then, from there it goes into the grand
artery of which the branches, scattered throughout
the body, are united to the branches of the vena
cava, which return the same blood to the same
right cavity of the heart." 1
The complete phenomena of the circulation of
the blood, both general and pulmonary, could not
be more completely or more briefly described.
But on the other hand, this is how Descartes
(1) Les passions dc Vame : Ire partie, art. 7.
12
132 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
came to conceive of the animal spirits and to form
his idea in regard to their action in the organs.
"It is known," he says, "that all the move-
ments of the muscles, as well as all the senses,
depend upon the nerves, which are like little
threads or little tubes coming from the brain,
and like it, containing a certain gas or air, very
subtile, called the animal spirits." 1
The most subtile parts of the blood form the
animal spirits ; and they have no need of receiv-
ing for this purpose, any other change in the
brain, but are only separated trom other and
less-refined parts of the blood ; for what I call
here spirits are only bodies, and have no peculiar
properties except that they are extremely small,
and they move very quickly like the sparks of fire
from a torch, and in such a manner that they do
not stop anywhere, but as fast as some enter the
cavities of the brain others come out through the
pores of its substance, which pores conduct them
into the nerves, and from them they pass into the
muscles, by which means the body is moved in all
the diverse manners of which it is capable of
being moved." 2
What was especially valuable to Descartes in
these animal spirits, was that they permitted him
(1) Les passions de V&me: Ire partie, art. 7.
(2) Ibid, art. 10.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 133
to explain all the actions of the body without any
assistance from the soul ; the great and final object
of his beautiful philosophy.
" All the movements which we make," he con-
tinues, " without our will causing them, as it often
happens that we walk, or eat, or indeed perform
any of the actions common to us and to the beasts,
depend only on the conformation of our members
and on the course which the spirits, excited by the
heat of the heart, follow naturally in the brain, in
the nerves, and in the muscles; in the same manner
as the movement of a watch is produced by the
force of its spring and the figure of its wheels." l
Thus Descartes accounted, by the course of the
spirits alone, for all the functions of the body; and
that being done he arrived at this principal conclu-
sion, viz: "there remains nothing in us which we
should attribute to the soul, except our thoughts." 2
After the first Descartes the philosopher who
made the most use of the spirits, is one who may
be called the second Descartes, Malebranche.
Malebranche commences one of his chapters
thus: "Every one knows that the animal spirits
are only the most subtile and most agitated parts of
the blood, which are produced principally by fer-
mentation and by the violent movement of the mus-
cles which compose the heart, that these spirits are
(1) Les passions de V&mc : Ire partie, art. 16.
(2) Ibid., art. 17.
134 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
conducted by the arteries with the rest of the
blood, as far as the brain " *
Malebranche conducted the spirits intrepidly, as
we see, to the brain ; but, having arrived there,
how are they separated from that organ? He ad-
mitted with good grace that he knew nothing about
it. "They are separated from it," he says, "by
some parts destined for that purpose, which are
not yet known." He explains in another place
the difference which he considers to exist between
the animal spirits and the brain. " There is this
difference between the animal spirits and the sub-
stance of the brain, the spirits are very restless
and very fluid, and the substance of the brain has
some solidity and consistence, so that the spirits
divide into small parties and disperse in a few
hours by transpiring through the pores of the ves-
sels which contain them, and often others come in
their place which are not at all similar to them." 2
And Malebranche says, that from this change of
spirits arise our changes in humor or temper ac-
cording to the different kinds of food and drink
we have used !
"Wine is so spirituous that it is almost wholly
formed into animal spirits, but spirits which are
libertine, and will not submit themselves readily
(1) De la Recherche de la verite, 1st part of book ii., chap, ii .
('2) Ibid., liv. ii., chap. vi.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 135
to the orders of the will, because of their subtility
and their excessive agitation. Thus, in the most
strong and vigorous men it produces more and
greater changes in the imagination and in all parts
of the body than food, or than any other beverage.
It trips up ones heels, as Plautus says; and pro-
duces in the mind effects which are not so advan-
tageous as those which Horace describes in the
lines commencing
' Quid non ebrietas designat.' *
The great Bossuet, of whom it can scarcely be
said that he followed any one in any department
of knowledge, nevertheless adopted the ideas of
Descartes in philosophy: he says, "the spirits,
carried into the muscles by the nerves distributed
through the members cause the progressive move-
ments " 2 Again, "the spirits are the most
lively and most agitated part of the blood, and set
in action all the members." 3 "As soon as the
spirits are lacking the springs fail for want of a
prime mover." 4 "The passions," he says finally,
"regarding them solely in the body, seem to be
nothing but an extraordinary agitation of the
(1) De la Recherche de la Verite, liv. ii., chap. ii.
(2) De la Connaisaance de Dieu et de soi-meme, chap, ii., J 6.
(3) Ibid., I 9.
(4) Ibid., 12.
136 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
spirits, occasioned by certain objects which we
must flee or pursue, etc., etc." 1
Malebranche died in 1715; Fontenelle in 1757,
and with the latter the last superior representative
of Cartesianism. With Cartesianism fell the animal
spirits.
In 1742, a young man full of spirit, full of fire,
full of ambition, and having all the audacity of
youth, sustained a thesis at the school of Mont-
pelier, in which he arraigned the spirits, attacked
them rudely and violently, and what is worse, for
all must be told, he ridiculed them.
"Might not an unprejudiced man," he says,
"who would give himself the trouble to examine,
be able to prove that the existence of any one of
these three kinds of spirits this tripod, or if you
will, this triumvirate of ancient physiology is but
poorly established. As to the manner in which
the moderns sustain them, we are struck, first, by
the prodigious number of forms which are given to
them ; some say they are air, others that they are
fire, or water, or lymph; they are said to be acid,
sulphurous, active, passive; two or three species of
them are given which flow in the same nerves;
finally they have received all kinds of figure, even
to that of eddies or whirlpools, or little balloons with
springs, (petits ballons a ressort] to use the terms of
(1) De la connaisance de Dieu el de soi-meme.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 137
M. Lieutaud, who is as well persuaded of the exist-
ence of these Gallons' as he is of the structure
which he supposes the brain to have. Let us add,
he continues, and always very ingeniously and very
judiciously, "let us add that those who admit the
existence of the spirits are as much embarrassed
to explain the functions of the nerves as those who
do not believe in them. Are we any farther ad-
vanced after following the infinite details of Boer-
haeve and his commentators upon this question?
Would it not be better to abandon it once for all,
and place it among those tiresome questions with
which the ancients commenced their physiologies?
Shall we never profit by the errors of those who
have preceded us?"
This is the way in which the young Bordeu, then
scarcely twenty years old, 1 treated the spirits, and
such is the fortune of the most beautiful doctrines
of philosophy. These same spirits, so deeply re-
vered by all the ancients, and in modern times by
such men as Descartes, Bossuet, and Malebranche,
end by becoming the convenient subject for the
familiar pleasantries of a school-boy.
(1) He was, in truth, just twenty, having been born in 1722,
and he presented his thesis in 1742, Dissertalio physiologica de
sensu generice considerate ; but he was thirty when he published,
in 1752, his Recherches anatomique sur la position des glandes et
sur leur action ; an excellent and much better matured work,
in which he reproduced his criticism of the spirits, and from
which I have taken the passages just quoted.
138 CIECULATION OF THE BLOOD.
After Bordeu came Barthez. Physiology was as-
suming a new aspect. Barthez, a metaphysician of
a superior order, was the first who in physiology
formed a clear conception of the forces, I mean of
forces arising from the facts, or as he well-called
them experimental causes: 1 "We can give," he
says, "to these general causes (of the phenomena
of life,) which I call experimental, and which are
only known by their laws which experiment teaches,
the synonymous and equally indeterminate names of
principles, powers, forces, faculties, etc." "Good
method in philosophizing in the science of man re-
quires that there should be referred to a single
principle of life in the human body the vital forces
which reside in each organ, and which cause its
functions, as well general, such as sensibility, nu-
trition, etc., as special, such as digestion, menstrua-
tion, etc." 2
Meanwhile the true idea of the experimental
cause, or principle, or force in physiology was not
yet fully developed. Barthez rightly called forces
the cause of the functions; he was right in his at-
tempt to connect all the secondary forces to one
primary, which is the general vital force; but he
was wrong to make this general and common force
(1) Nouv. elem. de la Sc. de I'homme, Paris, 180G; t. i., Disc,
prelim.
(2) Ibid.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 139
of life an individual being, abstracted and detached
from the organs; and he was still farther wrong
in believing himself able to explain any particular
phenomenon whatever by pronouncing the words
vital principle, and referring its origin to that, for
being necessarily involved in all, the vital princi-
ple could not serve as an explanation for any
single one.
The true problem is to arrive at the particular
force of each particular phenomenon ; at the prop-
erty or peculiar faculty which causes it. This has
been the aim of all physiologists since Haller.
Since, by his beautiful experiments, Haller local-
ized irritability in the muscles and sensibility in
the nerves, the way for great discoveries and cer-
tain advances in physiology has been open, for all
physiology is, I would say, in the precise localiza-
tion of each given vital force in a distinct organic
element.
As to the word spirits, (for, as soon as the true
name of the causes was found, it has been only a
word,) excluded from science by the railleries of
Bordeu, by the high metaphysics of Barthez, and
by the positive researches of Haller, it has ap-
peared no more.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, in
1779, I find it again employed, and perhaps it is
the' last time it has been used, in a fine page
of Buffon's, but it is in a very general sense, and it
140 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
retains scarcely anything of its primitive and tech-
nical meaning. Buffon says, in regard to the inde-
fatigable activity of the smallest birds: "The most
substantial nourishment is necessary to support the
prodigious vivacity of the humming-bird, compared
with its extreme smallness; it may well need a
supply of organic molecules to sustain so much
strength in such delicate organs, and maintain the
expenditure of spirits necessary for such perpetual
and rapid movements." x
(1) Uistoire des oiseaux-mouchea.
VI.
GUY-PATIN AND THE CONTEST BETWEEN ANCIENT AND
MODERN PHYSIOLOGY.
The Letters of Guy-Patin reveal to us a very
curious epoch in the history of the Faculty of
Medicine of Paris, and even in that of the science
itself. I reckon three grand eras in medicine since
the revival of letters : the Arabian, the .Greek
and Latin, and the modern, which commences
with the discovery of the circulation of the hlood.
The era which Guy-Patin pictures for us is the
second of these three divisions, the Greek and
Latin epoch, which may be called the erudite
period of French medicine. The yoke of the
Arabians had been thrown of ; Hippocrates, Aris-
totle, Galen, those masters of ancient learning,
were studied with enthusiasm, and everything
modern was despised the circulation of the blood,
the lymphatics, chemistry, and everything else.
Guy-Patin was, par excellence, the man of this
period : l he combatted the Arabians ; he denounced
(1) Although coming a little later. The discovery of the
circulation of the blood dates between 1G19 and 1628, and
the first letters of Guy-Patin were written in 1630. He
belonged by his birth to the third epoch, and by his doctrines
to the second.
142 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
the moderns, he was fanatically devoted to Hippo-
crates and Galen ; he would receive neither the
circulation of the blood nor chemistry, which cer-
tainly are not to be found in Galen or in Hippo-
crates; finally, to these medical prejudices he
added two others, he hated antimony because it
was the gift of the chemists and cinchona because
it was introduced by the Jesuits.
The best work of the period under examination,
the age of Guy-Patin, of Riolan, of Baillou and of
Fernel, was the simplification of medicine and par-
ticularly of therapeutics. The therapeutics of the
Arabians was a chaos. The Greeks did not use
enough remedies the Arabians multiplied them
without limit. There was everything in their
therapeia : alchemy, and astrology, while occult
qualities predominated. A certain boldness of
spirit was necessary to clear science of these false
surroundings. Fernel, the first physician of his
time, still believed in astrology. 1 We must pay
great attention, he says, to astrological observa-
tions : Astrologica etiam observatio ui non parum
efficax tenenda. 2 We read in Guy de Chauliac
(1) He at least commenced by believing it; he regretted
afterwards the time employed in it. See his biography by
Plancy : Joannis Fernelii, Ambiani, Galliarum archiatri, UNI-
VERSA MEDICINA, etc., Geneva, 1680.
(2) Ibid., De venue secticne, lib. ii. cap, xiv p. 202.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 143
that the figure of a lion imprinted in gold, cured
pains in the loins. 1
Guy-Patin admired Fernel ; he called him, and
with justice, a great man : " I esteem him as the
wisest and most polished of the moderns ;" 2 never-
theless he did not join him in his belief in astrology
and occult qualities.
" I do not believe," he says, " in occult qualities
in medicine, whatever Fernel and others may have
said on the subject, for their sayings are not all
scripture truth. In fact, I believe in medicine
only what I see Fernel was a great man,
but, as he did not say everything, so
also he has not said everything truly, in his
writings ; and if the good man, who is too soon
dead, to our great sorrow, had lived longer, he
would undoubtedly have changed some things in
his works, and especially upon this point." 3
He says elsewhere in regard to Jacques Char-
pentier and his commentary on Alcinous : " He
(1) Ast.ruc: Memoirs pour servir a Vhistoire de la Faculle de
medicine de Montpellier, Paris, 1767, p. 191.
(2) Letters de Guy-Patin, nouvelle edition augmentee de
letters ineditees, precedees d'une Notice biographique, ac-
compagnce de remarques scientifiques, bistoriques, et liter-
aires, par Reveille-Parise, 18-10, t i, p. 10.
(3) Ibid, t. i, p. 9.
[The quotations from Guy-Patin occurring hereafter are
from his "Letters" unless otherwise indicated. 2V.]
144 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
there follows particularly the guidance and the
opinion of Fernel, who in these matters was a
great Platonist, and who believed much more than
I do of dernonomania."
In truth, Guy-Patin could scarcely be reproach-
ed with being too credulous. I speak, of course,
only in regard to medicine, and I think that this
sentence of Bayle applies well to him ; " his creed
was not burdened with many articles." 1
His creed contained indeed so few articles that
there were only two of them : bleeding and purg-
ing I All the rest, antimony, opium, tea, cinchona,
etc., are rejected ; opium as a poison, tea as "an
impertinent novelty of the age," antimony because
it was proscribed by the faculty, and cinchona,
worse than all, because it was the Jesuit's pow-
der! 2
Of all the new remedies Guy-Patin was alone
favorable to senna; but, in revenge, to that he
was entirely devoted. He says ; " senna works
more miracles than all the drugs brought to us
from the Indies." He added to senna, cassia, and
the syrup of white roses ; and that was his entire
pharmacopeia. " So long as we have senna, cassia,
and syrup of white roses, we can continue to de-
liver Paris from the tyranny of the apothecaries."
(1) Diet. hist, et critique art. Guy-Patin.
(2) Letters, it. i and ii.
HISTORY OP THE DISCOVERY. 145
This man with a mind so active, so penetrating
and so prompt, but at the same time so prejudiced,
so determined, and so self-willed, imposed upon
himself the task of simplifying the science of
medicine, of rendering it easy and familiar ; 1
I make use of his own expressions. For he saw
it everywhere disgraced by the superstitious prac-
tices 2 of the Arabians, by the covetousness of the
apothecaries, and by the blind tenacity of the
chemical physicians of his time. He assisted
Guenaut in his experiments with antimony, expe-
riments which were often fatal, if we may believe
Guy-Patin, or even the poet, which is the same
as to say all the world.
According to Guy-Patin antimony alone has
killed more people than did the King of Sweden
in Germany ; and everybody knows what the poet
says:
" On compterait plutot combien dans un printempg
Guenaut et 1'antimoine ont fait mourir de gens " 3
After this we need not be astonished at the war
which Guy-Patin carried on against the Arabians,
against antimony, and against apothecaries ; against
the apothecaries above all, for them in he could par-
(1) "Je rends la pharmacie la plus populaire qu'il m' est
possible." (T. i, p. 23.)
(2) "It is the Arabians who have introduced into medicine
these scrupulous and superstitious observances." (t. ii, p. 68.)
(3) Boilean: Satire, iv.
146 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
don nothing ; neither their Arabianism, their chem-
istry, their drugs, nor their pills?
" He also spoke to me of M. Moze, the apothe-
cary, who esteems me highly as he says ; upon
which I expressed my astonishment, in view of the
fact that I had never done anything to make the
apothecaries esteem me, that I had never pre-
scribed their bezoars, nor their cordial waters,
neither theriaca, nor mithridate, neither the con-
fection of hyacinth nor of alkermes, nor the powder
of vipers, nor antimonial wine, nor pearls, nor
precious stones, nor any other such Arabian follies;
that I always preferred simple remedies which
were neither dear nor rare, and that I made the
science of medicine as simple as I possibly could."
" As to my dear enemies, the apothecaries,"
he says again, " they have complained to our
faculty of my last thesis in which they are ridi-
culed I spoke against their bezoars,
their confection of alkermes, their theriaque, and
their charges." "I leave this multitude
of remedies to those who practice medicine for
pomp and display, and who have an understanding
with the apothecaries." T
(1) Letters, t. iii, p. 541. " The apothecaries are enraged
against those physicians who, to prevent their tyranny, pre-
scribe in French and make their own remedies: cassia, senna,
syrup of peach flowers, of white roses, and of chicory with
rhubarb, suffice for nearly everything. I have never seen a
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 147
Thus then even in his most lively pleasantries
at the expense of his " dear enemies the apothe-
caries," Guy-Patin never forgot the object he had
in view, the philosophic and elevated idea of
simplifying medicine. " For myself, I agree with
MM. les Pietres, whose motto is ad bene meden-
dum, quam paitca, sed selecta et bene probata reme-
dia" " The grand Chancellor of England, Lord
Bacon, has wisely said that multitude remediorum
estfilia ignorantice"
But by constantly laboring to impress this view he
exaggerated its importance ; his only remedies, as I
just now said, were cathartics and phlebotomy, and
by a sort of compensation, upon his side, he abused
them.
Let us commence with the latter. He ordered
bleeding at every period of life, in infancy as well
as old age ; l he bled a patient thirty-two times
during one illness ; he caused himself to be bled
seven times for a cold ; he bled his mother-in-law
who was eighty-years of age, four times; he or-
disease curable at all, which could not be cured without anti-
mony, although sometimes for the benefit of the most bigoted,
I make use of our confections scammonees such as diaphenic,
diaprun solutif, Jiacartheme, dipsilium; but we must watch
closely and not take martre pour renard. '
(1) " We cure our patients who are past eighty by bleeding,
and we deplete as happily infants of two and three months
of age." (t. ii, p. 419.)
13
148 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
dered bleeding for an infant three days old; he
caused his own wife to be bled eight times in the
veins of the arm, and afterward bled her in those
of the foot ; she recovered, and he exclaimed :
" Vive ! the happy method of Galen, and the fine
verse of Joachim de Bellay :
'0 bonne, 6 saincte, 6 divine saignee!'
Now for cathartics. There is first a patient
"who has been purged thirty-two times every other
day;" there is another who has been bled, in all,
seventy-two times, and purged forty ; again, it is
the doctrine of Galen and Hippocrates "to purge
every day, quotidie licet purgare" on condition,
however, that senna is used : senna and phlebotomy
are the whole of medicine. 1
"We cure more patients," says Guy-Patin, "with
a good lancet and a pound of senna, than the Ara-
bians could with all their syrups and their opiates;"
and his patients died, (for certainly all did not
(1) [Moliere must have had him in mind when writing his
burlesque of the examination of an aspirant for a degree by
the Faculty of Medicine in " Le Malade imaginaire." To all
questions in regard to the treatment of any disease the candi-
date duly responds
'' Clysterium donare
Postea seignare
Ensuita purgare!"
And if this does not prove successful, the only course is to
" Reseignare, repurgare et reclysterisare!" Tr.]
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 149
recover,) like those of the physician described by
Boileau:
"L'un meurt vide de sang, 1'autre plein de send I" 1
Guy-Patin started with the excellent principle
of simplifying medicine and he ended by reducing
it to bleeding and senna. A physician of our day,
as resolute and as bold as Guy-Patin has reduced
it to leeches and gum-water. In everything human
there is some evil ; in reform it is exaggeration.
It must not be thought, however, that Guy-Patin
was always as unreasonable as in the extracts here
given. No one had better sense, or was clearer
and more judicious than he was at times. A wiser,
better and more complete judgment upon the com-
parative merits of Greek and Arabian medicine has
never been rendered than that which follows:
"As to the Arabians, I will tell you what I
think; in regard to their doctrines, all they had
valuable was taken from the Greeks; in regard to
their remedies, they lived in a time when they
could have had better ones than existed in the days
of Hippocrates ; but they abused them, and intro-
duced that miserable arabesque pharmacy with a
multitude of useless and superfluous drugs. The
great abuse of medicine comes from a plurality of
useless remedies and these caused blood-letting to
be too much neglected. The Arabians are the
(1) Artpottique, chant, iv.
150 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
cause of both Mesue has too much credit in
the world But we should be very wrong to
abandon and give up good remedies which have
been in use from the time of the Arabians, in order
to return to those of the days of Hippocrates which
are far less valuable It is the doctrine of
indications which has made the physician what
he is; and for this we are entirely indebted to the
Greeks."
In spite of his admiration of Hippocrates he
admitted that there was one passnge of that
great man's works which, being misunderstood,
"had cut the throat, and cost the life of more than
fifty thousand persons." He says elsewhere, " It
is a fine aphorism, but it should not be abused ;
our patients have nothing to do with our scholastic
disputes."
Finally, even antimony obtains from him in
calmer moments more circumspect remarks. " If
any one is to make use of this remedy, which in its
nature is so pernicious and so extremely dangerous,
he should be a good theoretical and practical physi-
cian and very judicious, neither ignorant nor reck-
less; it is not a proper drug for the rattle-headed."
Nothing could be more judicious. New remedies,
when they are energetic, demand a judicious and
experienced physician. We should study them,
watch them and follow them; not reject and pro-
scribe them nor condemn them by decrees of the
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 151
Faculty. 1 In what condition should we have been
now had our predecessors followed Guy-Patin and
the Faculty? We should not have had antimony,
opium, or cinchona ; we should have known nothing
of the circulation of the blood, the lymphatic ves-
sels, the receptaculum chyli, and many other things ;
we should have been without both chemistry and
physiology, the two sciences which have given us
modern medicine. How could the dean of the
faculty of medicine of Paris, a professor of the
College of France, for Guy-Patin filled both these
offices, how, we ask, could he write such words as
the following, while standing side by side with the
great Englishman, Harvey, who discovered the cir-
culation of the blood, and the greatest of French-
men, Descartes, who proclaimed it?
" If M. Duryer knows only how to tell false-
hoods and the circulation of the blood, he knows
only two things, of which I heartily hate the first
and care very little about the second. If he re-
turns I will teach him more important things in
medicine than the pretended circulation." 2
(1) There were two decrees of the Faculty against antimony.
[A sketch of the celebrated contest between the Galenical
and chemical physicians, and a notice of the decrees and
counter decrees in regard to antimony will be found in the
"Revolutionary History of the Materia Medica," in Paris'
Pharmacology. TrJ\
(2) Letlres, t. i., p. 513. The pretended circulation ! Moliere
could not do better. " But that which pleases me in him above
152
CIRCULATION OF TIIE BLOOD.
Pecquet was at Paris with Guy-Patin ; perhaps
he prescribed antimony; however, he discovered
the reservoir of the chyle, the last fact which com-
pleted the new theory of the circulation of the
blood, and Guy-Patin contented himself with say-
ing: "The whole discovery of Pecquet is a novelty
which I am quite ready to believe when it shall
have been demonstrated, and when it proves of
convenience and utility in morborum curatione;
quo excepto I will have nothing to do with it."
I hasten to leave this puerile language and these
culpable prejudices of Guy-Patin, and return to
what he did more illustrious and more worthy our
attention. He was truly a wise and learned man;
full of Greek and Latin knowledge, a man of belles-
lettres; he said himself, "learning and good sense
are all."
He says, "I love only Galen and Hippocrates;
I esteem Fernel, Duret, Hollier, Heurnius ; our
good friend Gaspard Hoffman does not displease
me at all, propter suam breviloquentiam and for
his criticism; cceteris lubens abstineo. I employ
what spare time I have better elsewhere ; the ma-
everything else, and in which he follows my example, is that
he follows blindly the opinions of our seniors, and that he has
never wished to understand nor has he examined the reasons
and experiments in favor of the pretended discoveries of our
times in regard to the circulation of the blood, and other doc-
trines of the same class." (Moliere. Le Malade imaginaire.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 153
jority of modern authors contain nothing hut repe-
titions."
He employed better "elsewhere" his spare time;
and it is easy to divine what he meant by "else-
where."
"I am guilty of no dissipation except in my
study with my books. The late M. Pietre, an in-
comparable man in goodness as well as in science,
was accustomed to say that he was guilty of dissi-
pation only in reading Cicero and Seneca, but that
he easily brought himself back again to duty by
the perusal of Galen* and Fernel."
This trait is charming. He had that elevated
mind in which the love of letters is a passion. He
wished to go to Germany to see his friend Hoff-
man : he went to Basle " to see there the tomb of
the great Erasmus." He visited the tombs of the
kings at St. Denis: "some tears escaped me before
the monument of that great and good king Francis
I., who founded our college of royal professors; I
must confess my weakness to you, I even kissed it,
and that of his father-in-law Louis XII., the father
of his people, and the best king we have ever had
in France." He brought his two sons to the tomb
of Fernel. " One hundred and two years ago to-
day, the sixteenth of April, died J. Fernel, a great
and illustrious man, of whom the memory will last
as long as the world, aid saltern quamdiu honos
habebitur bonis litteris; he is interred in St. Jac-
154 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
ques-de-la-Boucharie, near here. I often take ray
two sons there and exhort them to become like
him." He esteemed Fern el so highly that he
would prefer to be descended from Mm than to be
king. "I am delighted that you love our Fernel
so well; he is one of my saints, with Galen and
the late M. Pietre. I should esteem it a greater
glory to he descended from Fernel than to he king
of Scotland, or a relation of the emperor of Con-
stantinople. Fernel was good, wise and learned."
He had the gift of writing and relating good
stories: "Yesterday ahout two o'clock, in the wood
of Vincennes, four of his physicians, (Mazarin's),
viz : Guenaut, Valot, Bayer, and Beda, altercated,
and could not agree about the disease of which a
patient was dying. Bayer said the spleen was
mortified; Guinaut said it was the liver; Valot
said it was the lungs, and there was water in the
chest; and Beda maintained that it was an abscess
of the mesentery, and that the pus had been dis-
charged, he had seen it in the stools ; and in this
case he had seen what none of the others saw!
Are they not skillful men!"
Moliere could not have omitted such a comic
scene, 1 nor St. Simon, the eloquent St. Simon, the
(1) "The physicians debated below as usual, and did not
fail to disagree, some saying that the disease arose from the
brain, some from the intestines, some from the spleen, some
from the liver." (Le Medecin malgri lui.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 155
following striking passage among many others :
"We live in Paris as Juvenal says of Rome: hie
vivimus ambitiosd pauperpate, etc. I see nothing
but vanity, misery and avarice, imposture and ras-
cality. God has reserved us for a knavish and
dangerous age; it will soon be of great conse-
quence to be an honest man, so much has corrup-
tion been increased among all sorts of people for
forty years past, by war, by two cardinals, who
have been two great tyrants, and by the reign
of partisans, who have devoured and exhausted
France."
His mind presented many analogies with the
mind of Rabelais, of Bayle and of Voltaire; he
called Juvenal his dear friend; he painted Tacitus
"that master man" in a remarkable manner:
"Cornelius Tacitus, who was a breviary of State,
and the premier, or grand master of the secrets of
the cabinet, and whom even M. de Balzac has
somewhere called the ancient original of modern
finesse. Cardinal Richelieu read and practiced
Tacitus closely ; he was also a terrible man. Ma-
chiavelli is another instructor for such ministers of
state, but he is only a diminutive Tacitus."
[Le Sage also gives a similar ridiculous scene in chap. iii.
of Book iv. of Gil Bias, in which two of the " most eminent
physicians of Madrid" could not agree as to whether the
humors should be purged off before being concocted or not,
and as to what Hippocrates taught on the subject. TrJ\
14
156 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
Finally, he had noble and virtuous friends. That
society, which he dreamed for another world, he
chose for himself in this : " Socrates and another
philosopher consoled themselves in dying that they
would see in the other world honest men, philoso-
phers, poets and physicians. I am of the same
sentiment. If I can there meet Cicero, Virgil,
Aristotle, Plato, Juvenal, Horace, Galen, Fernel,
Simon and Nicolas Pietre, Moreau and Riolan, I
shall not be in bad company ; there is something
in that to console me."
His friends were the learned Naude, Gassendi,
Lamoignon, whose names it is sufficient to men-
tion, and this same Riolan and Pietre whom he
hoped to meet hereafter. "Monsieur, the first
president, sends for me sometimes to dine with
him ; he makes grand cheer for me ; but his hearty
reception is worth more than all the rest. I have
promised to dine with him every Sunday of this
Lent, and after that we will make other arrange-
ments according to the season. It is pleasant to
visit him for he is the most learned of the long robe
in France. He is very acute and very civil, and
says, smiling, that we must not speak evil of the
Jesuits and the monks, but he is delighted when a
bon mot escapes me against them."
How full of interest are all these details now!
"I supped lately with M. the premier president,
who sent to invite me in the morning. He com-
HISTORY OF TEE DISCOVERT. 157
plained because I did not call to see him, said
that I ought sometimes to come and entertain him,
and that I ought to have pity upon him on account
of the difficulties he had in the administration of
his office After supper we entertained our-
selves by the fireside. Among other things he
told me I ought to be very happy, since having
visited my patients I had only to pass my time
with my books; that, for him, his office was killing
him, and he thought himself far more unfortunate
than M. Patin. In truth, great dignities are
charges, which like hand-cuffs and fetters deprive
us of our liberty and make us the slaves of all the
world. This public office obliges him to give au-
dience to every one, takes away from him the
means and the leisure for diverting himself with
study which he naturally loves, and obliges him to
rise every palace day at four o'clock in the morn-
ing ; yet nevertheless, and notwithstanding all his
complaints, it is a very fine and a very important
dignity."
What a fine quaint style, how expressive, pre-
cise, and how well-marked by all the shades of life !
And on the other hand, what a picture of this first
president, who gets up at four o'clock in the morn-
ing, who has not leisure to divert himself with study,
who says we must not speak evil of the Jesuits, and
who is delighted when others do it ! All this is
life-like.
158 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
I have said nothing yet of the character of Guy-
Patin, and perhaps it is not necessary that I should.
The friendship of the chief magistrate, and such an
one as Lamoignon, is an index of this character.
We have seen, too, the style of his writing. One
of the qualities the most strongly marked of this
style is the evidence it gives of the honest man.
I have just thrown a rapid glance upon Guy-
Patin and his age : the age and the man both de-
mand a closer examination, and this must be the
object of another chapter.
VII.
GUY-PATIN AND THE FACULTY OF PARIS.
WE have had until now only the exterior history
of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris. Guy-Patin
gives us its internal history. He exposes to us the
hidden springs which moved this great body. He
knows all its secrets, and keeps none of them.
He tells us all because he does not know he is
speaking for our benefit, and his account is the
more reliable because he little thought he was
writing history.
No one has better informed us in regard to the
usages, or to speak like him, the ceremonies 1 of the
Faculty. Let us commence with the most impor-
tant act of this body, the election of dean. Guy-
Patin was dean once, and three times his name
remained in the hat. This is his account of the
manner in which the affair was conducted:
"All the Faculty being assembled, the dean who
is about to retire from office thanks the company
for the honor which has been conferred upon him,
(1) "All these ceremonies are very ancient and are re-
ligiously observed, out of respect for their antiquity." (T. ii.,
p. 566.)
160 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
and requests them to elect another to fill his place;
the names of all the doctors present, for no ab-
sentee can be elected, are on the table on as many
ballots ; the first half, from above downward, are
then placed in a hat, and this is called the grand
lane. There are now one hundred and twelve
members and the grand bane then consists of the
first fifty-six. When these ballots have been well
shaken and mixed in the hat by the ancient, or
senior, of the company, 1 which is at present M.
Riolan, the retiring dean draws out three, one after
the other; and two names are also immediately
drawn from the petit bane. Here are five doctors
neither of whom can at this time be dean, but they
are the electors, who, after having publicly taken an
oath of fidelity, are shut in the chapel where they
choose three members from the fellows present
whom they judge worthy of the office two being
chosen from the grand bane and one from the petit
bane; these three names are then placed in the
hat by the ancient, and the dean, with widely ex-
tended arm draws one out, and the member whose
name is drawn is the dean elect."
After the dean came the doctors-regent. They
were elected in the same manner. And after these
(1) Eancien de la compagnie ou fancien mailre. " The oldest
doctor of the company is called the master and can not be
termed dean; this being denied him by a decree of the
court." (T. ii., p. 566.)
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 161
followed the doctors, and for these the examina-
tions were very numerous ; there were some for the
baccalaureate, for the license, and for the degree.
There were theses of all kinds, the quodlibetiares,
the cardinal, etc. They knew how to be severe,
at least in the days of which I am speaking.
"Saturday, March 20th, we have passed ten
bachelors who are about to commence their course
of two years; we have also sent back two in order
that they may amend and study better for the
future ; unless they do so within that period of
time, they will fail of their duty, and we shall ex-
pel them from our schools as indolent and unworthy
of our privileges."
I remark the two years of perpetual disputation ;
our two years of clinical instruction are assuredly
much better spent, and yet we should exaggerate
nothing; these practiced debaters often became
admirable men of science. Says Riolan: "When
the king, Henry the Great, wished to prove the
falsehoods in the books of M. Plessis-Mornay in
regard to religion, which the Bishop of Evreux,
since Cardinal du Perron, promised to point out
and verify, as he did, a learned physician of our
school, named Martin, was chosen to oppose Ca-
saubon who was held the most learned man of the
age, after Joseph Scaliger who lived in Holland." 1
(1) Curieuses recherches sur lea ecokt en medicine de Paris el de
Montpellier. Paris, 1651, p. 34.)
162 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
It was by their science, their erudition and their
literary attainments that the Fernels, the Holliers,
the Durets, and the two Riolans, father and son,
elevated, ennobled, emancipated, if I may so speak,
the science of medicine. It is their glory and it
will be eternal. Medicine will never forget that
to them she owes her lustre.
I return to the Faculty. Its intimate structure
is plain enough. This body governed itself and
recruited itself as it had formed itself. "Our
school," says Riolan, "had for founders neither
the kings of France nor the city of Paris from
whom it has never received any assistance in
money. It was founded and has been maintained
at the expense of individual physicians, who have
contributed to build it, to endow it, etc." 1
The corps medical of Paris, taken in itself, was
a little republic, a true republic, which had the
doctors for citizens, the Faculty for a senate and
the Dean for a chief. This chief was only elected
for two years, but during that time he had a real
authority. "He is," says Guy-Patin, "the master
of the bachelors who are in their pupilage, he
directs the discipline of the school, he keeps our
registers which extend back more than five hun-
dred years, he has the two seals of the Faculty, he
receives our revenue and renders us an account of
(1) Curieuses recherches, etc., p. 29.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERT. 165
it, he signs and approves all the theses, he causes
the doctors to preside according to their rank, he
calls the Faculty together whenever he pleases,
and without his consent it can not assemble except
under a decree from the court which it is necessary
to obtain ; with the four examiners he conducts the
rigorous examinations of a week's duration, he is
one of the three deans who govern the University
with the rector and is one of those who elect that
officer; he has double the revenue of the others
and that amounts sometimes to a very considerable
sum; he has great responsibilities, much honor,
and a large amount of business ; he conducts the
legal proceedings of the Faculty and speaks even
in the grand chamber before the advocate gen-
eral." 1
Our little republic had within it all the good and
all the evil of great ones. Its individual members
were passionately devoted to the glory of the corps,
and this was the good ; but every moment saw the
formation of parties, divisions, cabals and factions,
and this was the evil. Often one party condemned
the other ; sometimes even expelled them. In 1651,
Guenaut, Beda and Cornuti, who had allowed them-
selves to be carried away by antimony, 2 were con-
demned by the Faculty : " this made them return
(1) Lettret de Gui-Patin, t. ii., p. 566.
(2) Expression of Gui-Patin.
164 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
to their duty," says Guy-Patin, " and if hereafter
they are wanting, we shall not be ; the law and the
efficacy of the decree will be applied to them so
efficaciously, that they will remain exiled." l Often
one party reversed what the other had done. In
1566, one party obtained the issue of a decree
against antimony, 2 and in 1666, just a century
later, another party passed a directly contrary
decree in favor of the remedy.
When we see the Faculty thus founding itself,
maintaining itself, endowing itself, and owing
everything to its members and nothing to the
state, one can well understand that independence
which was so peculiar to it, of which it was so jeal-
ous, and which the state always respected. Our
kings treated with the Faculty. Louis XI. wished
to have a manuscript of Rhazes copied, which the
Faculty owned; but the Faculty would not lend
the manuscript to the royal applicant until he had
deposited security. 3 Richelieu exerted his influ-
ence in favor of the admission to the doctorate of
the sons of the gazetier Renaudot, a man most
violently hated by the Faculty; he persisted, the
Faculty resisted, and Richelieu was obliged to
abandon his point. "All individual men die," says
Guy-Patin proudly, "but companies never die.
(1) Lettres de Gui-Patin, t. ii., p. 587.
(2) There was another decree against antimony, in 1615.
(3) T. L, p. 37. Note of M. Reveille-Parise.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 165
The most powerful man in Europe for a hundred
years, except crowned heads, was Cardinal Riche-
lieu. He made the whole earth tremble; he made
Rome itself fear him ; he shook the King of Spain
on his throne; nevertheless he was not able to
make our company receive the two sons of the
gazetier, who were licentiates, but who will not
for a long time become doctors."
Finally, the Faculty perished like all associated
bodies, all republics, by the exaggeration of its
peculiar principles. Its grand aim had been to
restore Greek and Latin medicine. This attained
it stopped obstinately and fatally. It advanced
no farther; but everything around was advancing.
Modern chemistry, anatomy and physiology were
discovered. These sciences the Faculty proscribed.
When the government earnestly wished to extend
a knowledge of them it was obliged to have them
taught elsewhere. The Jardin du Roi was created,
or restored. The Faculty proscribed chemistry and
this, it said, for good causes and considerations; 1 in
the garden it was taught by a chair established ex-
pressly for that purpose. Riolaii, 2 the first anato-
(1) Expressions of the Faculty in its Remonstrances upon
the creation of the Jardin du Roi. See the Notices histonque
sur le Museum d'histoire naturelle par Laurent de Jussieu: An-
nales du Museum d'hist. nat., t. i., p. 12.
(2) It is curious that Riolan, who rejected modern anatomy
on behalf of the Faculty and would have excluded it from the
garden, was one of the first who felt the need of such a gar-
166 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
mist in the ranks of the Faculty, rejected the cir-
culation of the blood, the lymphatic vessels, the
receptaculum chyli, etc.; they were taught in the
garden by Dionis. Dionis tells us himself, in his
epistle to the king (Louis XIV.) "It is there that
the circulation of the blood and the new discoveries
have happily freed us from those errors, which we
scarcely dared to leave, and which the authority of
the ancients so long fixed upon us." l
Dionis afterward tells us that "this establish-
ment, although most useful for the public, did not
fail to find opposition, which was raised on the part
of those who pretended that they alone had the
right to teach and demonstrate anatomy." 2
den. It is an honor which should not be forgotten, although
he had so many other claims upon our memory. "You can
likewise inform the king," he says in the dedicatory epistle
of his Giganlologie, addressed to the Due de Luynes, " you can
inform the king, who only desires the health and preservation
of his subjects, of the necessity of a royal garden in the Uni-
versity of Paris, such as Henry the Great had laid out for
Montpellier ; which, if we obtain from the king, by your in-
tercession, you will oblige all France, which will appreciate
the great benefit you will have procured for all those who
practice medicine." (p. 8.)
(1) Uanatomie de Vhomme suivant la circulation du sang et les
nouvelles decouvertes, demontree au Jardin du roi, Paris, 1716 :
JEpitre au roi, p. 2.
(2) Ibid, Preface, p. 6. Modern anatomy finally passed
from the garden to the Faculty: often the same professor
taught it in both places. See Winslow and others.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 167
It may readily be surmised who those were who
"formed opposition," and who "pretended that
they alone had the right to teach and demonstrate
anatomy." They were the same persons who pur-
sued the surgeons and the apothecaries with un-
pitying and incessant hostility. In truth, the
Faculty did not pretend to reject surgery as it had
rejected the new sciences, hut it excluded the sur-
geons. Guy-Patin spoke of the surgeons in terms
which causes us to blush for him. The government
was obliged to do for surgery what it had already
done for the new sciences. The Faculty closed
their doors against it, the government opened others
for it. The Royal College of Surgery was created.
"This latter title (the title of the Faculty,)" said
La Martiniere to King Louis XV, "was the object
of our ambition, but, since your supreme will has
deigned to accord us the title of College royal, the
honor of depending immediately upon your Majesty
suffices to console us for every other distinction." 1
The Academy of Surgery appeared, and appeared
with an eclat which attracted the attention of all
Europe. The first volume of the Memoirs of this
Academy is the most beautiful monument of French
surgery. The Royal Society of Medicine came in
its turn, and then this ancient Faculty, which had
(1) Memoire presentc au roi par son premier chirurgien Lamar-
tiniere, etc.
168 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
lasted eight centuries, 1 terminated its existence.
After the revolution of 1789, when the department
of public instruction was reorganized, the remain-
ing members of the Royal Society of Medicine
served as the nucleus of the new Faculty.
Guy-Patin tells us everything about his Faculty,
not only that which is serious but that which is the
reverse. I have just described some of the cere-
monies of the Faculty. Each of these events was
followed by a feast: "Saturday, March 20th, we
received six bachelors The same day an
entertainment was given to the schools." Then
Guy-Patin enumerates all the invited, carefully
indicating the rank of each: "the dean and cen-
sors, the ancient deans, the four examiners, the
five doctors, the four seniors of the schools, the
ordinary professors, some friends of the dean, who
are the best men of the schools and the most con-
siderable of the Faculty I never saw such
enjoyment on the part of all; there was nothing
but merriment and good cheer."
He was elected dean on the 4th of November,
1650, and on the 1st of December, he gave his en-
tertainment. "Having returned home this morn-
ing, I found your letter there, which has increased
the joy I had yesterday in giving my feast on
(1) "By the perusal of ancient books," says Riolan, "we
can show proof of more than six hundred years." (Curieuses
recherches, etc., p. 28.) Riolan wrote this in 1661. .
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 169
account of my election. Thirty- six of my col-
leagues made merry; I never saw so much drink-
ing and laughing by steady people, and even by
our seniors : they had the best old wine of Bour-
gogne which I reserved for the feast. I received
them in my room, where, besides the tapistry, are
the portraits of Erasmus, the two Scaligers, father
and son, Casaubon, Muret, Montaigne, Charron,
Grotius, Heinsius, Saumaise, Fernel, de Thou, and
our good friend Gabriel Naude, librarian of Ma-
zarin, which is only his external quality, for of the
internal ones he has as many as any one can have ;
he is very learned, good, and wise, has gained ex-
perience and is cured of the folly of the age, a
faithful and constant friend for thirty-two years.
There were also three other portraits of excellent
men of the late M. de Sales, bishop of Geneva,
of Justus Lipsius, and finally of Francois Rabelais.
What do you say of this assembly ? Were not my
guests in good company?"
Everything is worthy of note in this recital; the
joy of Guy-Patin, the old wine, the seniors who
laughed and who drank, and above them the por-
traits of Erasmus, Casaubon, Montaigne, Rabelais,
Fernel, and other worthies, with the friend Naude,
Mazarin's librarian, which is only his external qual-
ity! And how completely all this is characteristic
of Guy-Patin ! the friendly, the erudite, the critical,
the. enthusiastic, the malicious, the good-natured,
170 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
and finally the spiritual, bold, and deniaise Guy-
Patin !
Guy-Patin is inexhaustible -when he speaks of
the Faculty; he is, if possible, still more so when
speaking of men. It is first Riolan, 1 his master,
his friend, who took him for his assistant, 2 who de-
signed him for his successor at the Royal College
of France, whom Guy-Patin calls our master in
everything; "and of the men of the world who
knew most of particulars and of curiosities, not
only in medicine but also in history at once
a very good man, and naturally very sarcastic, ....
who would that all the world wrote against him,
(1) It is scarcely necessary to state that Eiolan of whom
I speak in this chapter, is Riolan the son, born in 1580 and
died in 1657. He alone was a contemporary of Guy-Patin as
Riolan the senior was born in 1539 and died in 1605.
(2) Here is something curious in regard to the college of
France. " M. Moreau will not give up his place as Royal
professor to his son until death, because, as he is one of the
seniors of the College he has far greater receipts, on account
of augmentation in favor of the earliest received, than his
son, who being one of the youngest, will only receive six
hundred livres, while the father receives one thousand, or
nearly eleven hundred livres. Morin, the mathematician
who is immediately next to him has the entire sum, four hun-
dred crowns, the same as the dean M. Riolan ; when the latter
dies I shall take his place, having the same reversion as the
youngest Moreau, and then I enter upon the receipt of six
hundred livres; afterward I succeed and increase as others
die who were received before me." (T. ii., p. 162.)
HISTORY OP THE DISCOVERY. 171
keeping himself close in his study, with a
stove for warmth in the manner of the Germans,
and there writing against antimony, drink-
ing wine all day, or adding to it but very little
water, and saying for excuse, that it was old wine
of Bourgogne."
Then it is the family of the Pietres, all incom-
parable, the elder above all, for he presided as dean
when antimony was proscribed : in cujus decanatu
latum est decretum adversus stibium, says Guy-Patin.
With Guy-Patin there is no one of medium qual-
ity; he is is either incomparable or abominable,
according as he opposes antimony or not! For
example, Guenaut, "wicked charlatan, obstinate in
all things playing the tyrant in our schools,
abusing at the expense of the public, the iniquity
and impunity of the age a brazen-faced pre-
scriber of antimony, peste antimoniale," etc., etc.
Guenaut was not probably all that, although he
must have been very lively, very active, very much
occupied, and a man of some station, for Boileau
reckons him among the embarrassments of the
streets of Paris:
" Guenaut sur son cheval en passant m'eclabousse." 1
Vautier is "wicked, very boastful and very
ignorant; the first physician of the king and the
(1) Satire vi.
172 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
last of the kingdom in capacity ;" and you imme-
diately divine why: lie gives antimony ; and that
is not all, lie speaks ill of senna and bleeding!
" M. Vautier slanders our Faculty frequently and
we know it well ; he says that we use nothing but
senna and depletion ; he has given antimony very
boldly."
M. Morisset, on the contrary, does not give anti-
mony; see what different language! "Le sieur
Morisset is sixty-seven years old, he has a
good appearance ; he seems to be boastful, but is
not so ; he has, however, what might render him
so more than others, for he is a very learned and
skillful man. He converses well, he speaks elo-
quently, he consults with judgment, speaks Latin
well, understands Greek, and would never prescribe
antimony." He would never prescribe antimony:
" even although he has been implored to do so, and
principally by Guenaut." :
Guy-Patin is passionate in everything: in poli-
tics as well as in medicine. In medicine, what he
hated most was antimony and Guenaut, in politics
it was the Jesuits and Mazarin. He did not like
Richelieu any better. "Cardinal Richelieu," he
says, "resembled Tiberius, he is a splenetic,
who wished to reign Mazarin did not love
vengeance or blood, but he was a great cut-purse."
(1) Lettres de Gui-Patin, t. iii., p. 412.
. HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 173
It often happened that he treated the Jesuits,
the monks, and the Pope himself, as if they had
given antimony! On the contrary he showed a
marked affection for Parliament, for liberty, for
every kind of independence, political, civil and re-
ligious, for the Fronde, for Cardinal de Retz. " The
diet of Ratisbon is also spoken of, and it is said
that the king will send M. le Cardinal de Retz
there. Would to God that he be reinstated in
favor ! he is a man of spirit, who loves glory and
the public honor, to which 'he will infallibly be of
benefit." And as soon as he saw Louis XIV., then
quite young, he foresaw in the young prince the
great king: he says, "the king is a prince well-
proportioned, large and tall, not yet twenty years
old. He is," he continues, "a prince worthy of
being loved even by those to whom he has never
been of service, who has great thoughts, and upon
whose inclinations France will be able to found a
repose of which Richelieu and Mazarin have de-
prived her. I feel a violent attachment for him."
I finish with regret; for it is difficult to quit
Guy-Patin, a man so singular of his class: writer,
physician, scholar, devout worshiper of the an-
cients, a passionate opponent of the moderns, a
spirit all fire, as he says himself, and joining to
these, pure morals, warm and constant friendship,
and the liveliest tenderness for his children: "I
love children dearly," he says; "I have six, and it
174 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.
seems to me that I have not enough ; I am very
happy to learn that you have a little daughter ; we
have only one and she is so gentle and so agreea-
ble that we love her almost as much as we do our
five boys."
We know that he was not a happy father. Of
his six children, five died young, a loss which
brought from his pen these touching words : quo-
dam modo moritur Hie qui amittit suos. His eldest
son, Robert, for whom he had obtained the succes-
sion of his chair in the College of France, died
early ; and his deeply -loved son Charles, his " dear
Carolus," as he always called him, the illustrious
son who inherited his father's genius and his pas-
sion for study, was exiled.
As to himself, he was born l on the 31st of Au-
gust, 1601, and died on the 30th of August, 1672.
His Letters commence in 1630 and end in the year
of his death. They are addressed, by turns, to
two physicians of Troyes, the two Berlins, father
and son, and to two physicians of Lyons, Charles
Spon and Andre Falconet.
M. Reveille-Parise alludes to some small works
by Guy-Patin : 2 these works are very insignificant.
(1) At La Place, a little hamlet of the commune of Hodenc-
en-Bray (not far from Beauvais,) an ancient province of
Picardy.
(2) In his Notice Uvgraphique preceding hia edition of the
Lettres de Guy-Patin.
HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY. 175
Guy-Patin, in truth, wrote nothing but his Letters;
and these letters, in spite of a boldness of thought
often excessive/ in spite of language often too vio-
lent, in spite of many errors in facts and many
prejudices against men, these letters, the brilliant
expression of a superior mind and a fiery spirit
will ensure his remembrance, for he has put that
in them which never dies style.
Guy-Patin is the most spiritual and witty physi-
cian who ever wrote, if we except Rabelais, of
whom, however, physician was only the "external
quality"
[PARIS alludes to one of them in the "Revolutionary His-
tory of the Materia Medica " prefixed to his Pharmacologia.
It was entitled " Antimonial Martyrology" and consisted of a
register of unsuccessful cases in which antimony had been,
given ! Tr.~\
(3) " He wrote to one of his friends with a liberty not only
entire, but sometimes excessive ; elogiums are not very com-
mon in his Lettres and what predominates there is very inde-
pendent philosophic spleen." (Fontenelle: Eloge de Dodart.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
I. HARVEY AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD, 11
Erasistratus, 12
Galen, 13
The first modern anatomists, 16
Servetus and the pulmonary circulation, 19
Columbus, 25
Cccsalpinus, 26
Ccesalpinus and the general circulation, 27
Fabricius ab Acquapendente, 31
Sarpi, 31
Vasseus or Le Vasseur and a quotation of M. Portal, 33
Harvey, 34
II. DUVERNEY AND THD FCETAL CIRCULATION, 45
Galen, 45
The early modern anatomists, Vesalius and Eallopius, 43
Arantius and Carcanus, 60
Botal, 62
The uses of the ductus arteriosus and foramen ovale, 64
Harvey, 68
Duverney and Mcry, 61
III. ASELLT, PECQUET, RUDBECK, BARTHOLIN, G7
The lacteals, the receptaculum chili, & the lymphatics, 67
Galen and the theory of sanguification, 68
178 TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Pecquet and the reservoir of the chyle, 81
Rudbeck and the lymphatic vessels, 83
Thomas Bartholin & the lymphatics of the entire body, 85
Thomas Bartholin and the obsequies of the liver, 86
Biolan and Harvey, 88
Aristotle and the formation of blood in the heart, .... 90
Stenon and the true use of the heart, 92
Lower and the coloration of the blood by the lungs,... 93
The Spirits, 96
Innate heat, 97
IV. SARPI AND THE VALVES OF THE VEINS, 100
Sarpi, 101
Sarpi and the valves of the veins, 102
Sarpi and the circulation of the blood, 108
Harvey and the true use of the valves, 116
Harvey and his predecessors, 118
Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa, 119
V. SERVETUS AND THE FORMATION OF THE SPIRITS, 122
VI. GUY-PATIN AND THE CONTEST BETWEEN ANCIENT AND
MODERN PHILOSOPHY, 141
VH. GUY-PATIN AND THE FACULTY OF PARIS, 159
vnof i
OQ3IO M
VlNUOdlT'