HARVEY 47 



clacks or valves to which Harvey refers are doubtless, 

 first, the valves between the auricle and ventricle which 

 prevent blood that has once entered the ventricle from 

 getting back into the auricle, and second, the valve at 

 the commencement of the pulmonary artery which 

 prevents blood once driven into that vessel from 

 the ventricle, from getting back again into the ventricle. 



Harvey soon attained eminence in his profession. In 

 1618 he was appointed physician to King James i., and 

 he must have been very busy about the Court. He cared 

 little for politics, but took the Royalist side in the Civil 

 War, served with Charles' army, and was present at the 

 battle of Edge Hill. There are many indications to show 

 that he was widely trusted by his medical colleagues 

 as a wise and discreet adviser. He was not one of those 

 unhappy geniuses of whom it is said that ' a prophet 

 hath no honour in his own country ' (JOHN, chap. iv. 

 ver. 44). In spite of his other occupations he continued 

 to lecture regularly at the College of Physicians. Yet, 

 strangely enough, these lectures, embodying the most 

 revolutionary doctrine delivered by the most sober and 

 conservative of lecturers, seem to have attracted little 

 attention. Their full importance was certainly not 

 appreciated for some years. 



Soon, however, his views were to reach a wider audience. 

 In 1628 there happened an event of primary importance 

 for the progress of science. In that year Harvey pub- 

 lished at Frankfurt his great work a very great work 

 it is in a wonderfully small bulk. It is a badly printed 

 quarto volume of 72 pages, containing a very large 

 number of misprints. These need not surprise us when 

 we glance again at his handwriting ! (Plate VI.). The 

 book is in Latin and is called An Anatomical Dissertation 

 concerning the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals. 

 It is dedicated to King Charles i., who had ascended the 



