THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. 445 



it is there asserted, " is accompanied by a vein ; the former are filled 

 only with breath or air." * But whether or no this passage be Aris- 

 totle's, he held opinions equally erroneous ; as, that the windpipe con- 

 veys air into the heart. 4 Galen 5 was far from having views respecting 

 the blood-vessels, as sound as those which, he entertained concerning 

 the muscles. He held the liver to be the origin of the veins, and the 

 heart of the arteries. He was, however, acquainted with their junc- 

 tions, or anastomoses. But we find no material advance in the know- 

 ledge of this subject, till we overleap the blank of the middle ages, and 

 reach the dawn of modern science. 



The father of modern anatomy is held to be Mondino,' who dis- 

 sected and tauo-ht at Bologna in 1315. Some writers have traced in 



O O 



him the rudiments of the doctrine of the circulation of the blood ; for 

 he says that the heart transmits blood to the lungs. But it is allowed, 

 that he afterwards destroys the merit of his remark, by repeating the 

 old assertion that the left ventricle ought to contain spirit or air, which 

 it generates from the blood. 



Anatomy was cultivated with great diligence and talent in Italy by 

 Achillini, Carpa, and Messa, and in France by Sylvius and Stephanus 

 (Dubois and Etienne). Yet still these empty assumptions respecting 

 the heart and blood-vessels kept their ground. Vesalius, a native of 

 Brussels, has been termed the founder of human anatomy, and his 

 great work De Humani Corporis Fabricd is, even yet, a splendid 

 monument of art, as well as science. It is said that his figures were 

 designed by Titian ; and if this be not exactly true, says Cuvier, 7 they 

 must, at least, be from the pencil of one of the most distinguished 

 pupils of the great painter ; for to this day, though we have more 

 finished drawings, we have no designs that are more artistlike. Fallo- 



O * * ' 



pius, who succeeded Vesalius at Padua, made some additions to the 

 researches of his predecessor ; but in his treatise De Principio Vena- 

 "um, it is clearly seen 8 that the circulation of the blood was unknown 

 to him. Eustachius also, whom Cuvier groups with Vesalius and 

 Fallopius, as the three great founders of modern anatomy, wrote a 

 treatise on the vein azygos* which is a little treatise on comparative 

 anatomy ; but the discovery of the functions of the veins came from a 

 different quarter. 



3 DeSpiritu, v. 1078. 4 Spr. i. 501. 6 Ib. ii. 152. 



' Encyc. Brit. 692. Anatomy. T Lecons snr I' Hist, des Sc. Nat. p. 21 . 



6 Cuv. 8c. Nat. p. 32. 9 Ib. p. 34 



