446 HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY. 



The unfortunate Servetus, who was burnt at Geneva as a heretic in 

 1553, is the first person who speaks distinctly of the small circulation, 

 or that which carries the blood from the heart to the lungs, and back 

 again to the heart. His work entitled Christianismi Restitutio was 



o 



also burnt ; and only two copies are known to have escaped the flames. 

 It is in this work that he asserts the doctrine in question, as a colla- 

 teral argument or illustration of his subject. " The communication 

 between the right and left ventricle of the heart, is made," he says, 

 " not as is commonly believed, through the partition of the heart, but 

 by a remarkable artifice (inayno artificio) the blood is carried from the 

 right ventricle by a long circuit through the lungs ; is elaborated by 

 the lungs, made yellow, and transfused from the vena arteriosa into 

 the arteria venosa" This truth is, however, mixed with various of the 

 traditional fancies concerning the " vital spirit, which has its origin in 

 the left ventricle." It may be doubted, also, how far Servetus formed 

 his opinion upon conjecture, and on a hypothetical view of the forma- 

 tion of this vital spirit. And we may, perhaps, more justly ascribe 

 the real establishment of the pulmonary circulation as an inductive 

 truth, to Realdus Columbus, a pupil and successor of Vesalius at 

 Padua, who published a work De Re Anatomica in 1559, in which he 

 claims this discovery as his own. 10 



Andrew Csesalpinus, who has already come under our notice as one 

 of the fathers of modern inductive science, both by his metaphysical 

 and his physical speculations, described the pulmonary circulation still 

 more completely iu his Qucestiones Peripatetic^ and even seemed to 

 be on the eve of discovering the great circulation ; for he remarked 

 the swelling of veins below ligatures, and inferred from it a refluent 

 motion of blood in these vessels. 11 But another discovery of structure 

 was needed, to prepare the way for this discovery of function ; and 

 this was made by Fabricius of Acquapendente, who succeeded in the 

 grand list of great professors at Padua, and taught there for fifty 

 years. 1 ' Sylvius had discovered the existence of the valves of the 

 veins ; but Fabricius remarked that they are all turned towards the 

 heart. Combining this disposition with that of the valves of the 

 heart, and with the absence of valves in the arteries, he might have 

 come to the conclusion 13 that the blood moves in a different direction 

 ji the arteries and in the veins, and might thus have discovered the 

 circulation : but this glory was reserved for William Harvey : so true 



10 Encyc. Brit. n Ib. " Cuv. p. 44. I3 p. 45. 



