LETTERS 



LETTER I 



To Caspar Hofmann, M.D. Published at Nurenberg, 

 in the " Spicilegium Illustrium Epistolarum ad Casp. 

 Hofmannum" 



YOUR opinion of me, my most learned Hofmann, so 

 candidly given, and of the motion and circulation of 

 the blood, is extremely gratifying to me ; and I rejoice 

 that I have been permitted to see and to converse with 

 a man so learned as yourself, whose friendship I as 

 readily embrace as I cordially return it. But I find 

 that you have been pleased first elaborately to inculpate 

 me, and then to make me pay the penalty, as having 

 seemed to you " to have impeached and condemned 

 Nature of folly and error ; and to have imputed to her 

 the character of a most clumsy and inefficient artificer, 

 in suffering the blood to become recrudescent, and 

 making it return again and again to the heart in order 

 to be reconcocted, to grow effete as often in the general 

 system ; thus uselessly spoiling the perfectly-made blood, 

 merely to find her in something to do." But where or 

 when anything of the kind was ever said, or even 

 imagined by me by me, who, on the contrary, have 

 never lost an opportunity of expressing my admiration 

 of the wisdom and aptness and industry of Nature, as 

 you do not say, I am not a little disturbed to find such 

 things charged upon me by a man of sober judgment 

 like yourself. In my printed book, I do, indeed, assert 

 that the blood is incessantly moving out from the heart 



175 



