3 1822 01176 0600
 
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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CAUFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 BM BlOMEOrAL LIBRARY 
 DIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEG0 
 LA JGLLa, CALIFORNIA
 
 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 
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