Editor's Introduction xiii 



The view may be ventured that another confusion is 

 responsible for a good deal that has been said about 

 Harvey having been forestalled in the discovery. It 

 is confusing the passage through the lungs of some 

 blood with the whole mass of it. It is difficult to 

 believe, on taking a broad view of all their statements 

 on the subject, that any of Harvey's predecessors 

 realised that the whole mass of the blood was con- 

 tinually passing through the lungs. Had they done so 

 it is further difficult to see how the systemic circulation 

 should have escaped them. But of this they certainly 

 had no idea. 



We may admit all this previous knowledge without 

 its detracting from the greatness and merit of Harvey's 

 work. Although the same anatomical facts, and even 

 a glimmering of the Pulmonary Circulation may have 

 been present to the minds of his predecessors or con- 

 temporaries, yet the genius, the spark of originality by 

 which was discovered the proper relation to one another 

 of the former, the true significance and meaning of the 

 latter, belongs to Harvey and to him alone. 



As was said by one of the best informed minds J of 

 the eighteenth century: "It is not to Csesalpinus, 

 because of some words of doubtful meaning, but to 

 Harvey, the able writer, the laborious contriver of so 

 many experiments, the staid propounder of all the 

 arguments available in his day, that the immortal 

 glory of having discovered the Circulation of the Blood 

 is to be assigned." 



William Harvey was born on April i, in the year 

 1578, at Folkestone, the eldest of seven sons of a 

 well-to-do Kentish yeoman. When ten years old he 

 was sent to the Grammar School at Canterbury, and re- 

 mained there until he was fifteen. He then proceeded 

 to Caius College, Cambridge, where after three years' 

 residence he took the usual degree. Desiring to 

 enter the medical profession, he adopted a course, not 



1 Haller, Elementa Physiologies, vol. i. lib. iii., 1757. 



