Editor's Introduction xi 



when the cruelty of theological dispute sent him to the 

 stake at the age of forty-four, it deprived physiology 

 of a most promising investigator. The book in which 

 the account of the Pulmonary Circulation is found has 

 a most curious history. All copies of it, except one, 

 were burnt with Servetus. This copy became the pro- 

 perty of D. Colladon, one of his judges. After passing 

 through the library of the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel 

 it came into the hands of a Dr. Mead, who undertook 

 in 1723 to issue a quarto edition of it, but before 

 completion the sheets were seized at the instance of 

 Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, and destroyed. The 

 Due de Valise is said to have given 400 guineas 

 for the original copy, and at his sale it brought 3,810 

 livres. It is now in the National Library at Paris. 

 It may well be questioned therefore whether the 

 discovery of Servetus was ever known to the anatomists, 

 including Harvey, who wrote after his death. One of 

 these was Realdus Columbus, who published a work 

 on Anatomy 1 six years after Servetus died, in which 

 he shows that he clearly understood the valves of the 

 heart, and describes the passage of the blood through 

 the lungs. Columbus has been claimed as the real 

 discoverer of the circulation and as having forestalled 

 Harvey. But neither Servetus nor Columbus had any 

 notion of the Greater or Systemic Circulation. And 

 the latter actually says the heart is not muscular, and 

 speaks of a to-and-fro movement of the blood in the 

 veins. 



But a third and much more serious precursor of 

 Harvey as the discoverer has been brought forward in 

 the person of Andreas Csesalpinus 2 of Arezzo, justly 

 renowned as the earliest of botanists. He actually 

 used the word " circulation" in regard to the passage of 

 the blood through the lungs. The claims of Caesal- 

 pinus have been taken up with enthusiasm, not to say 



1 De Re Anatomica, 1559. 



2 Qusestiones Peripateticae, 1569. De Piantis, 1583. 



