300 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"I have seen, I have touched, the book of Servetus ! " He then goes 

 on to state that it is perhaps the only copy now in existence ; that it 

 belonged to Colladon, one of the accusers raised uj) by the pitiless 

 Calvin against the unfortunate Servetus ; that this copy formerly 

 belonged to the celebrated English physician Dr, Richard Mead, and 

 was afterward purchased by the Royal Library of France at a very 

 high price. In it, says Flourens, Colladon has underscored the pas- 

 sages upon which he accused Servetus ; and that, finally, as a last 

 mark of undeniable authority, several pages of this unlucky volume 

 are scorched and blackened by fire. It was not saved from the pile 

 where author and work were burned together until after the confla- 

 gration had commenced. 



In this rare book is contained the first account ever written of the 

 pulmonary circulation. I will not stop to quote the exact words as I 

 have them in translation, but will briefly state that, in plain and un- 

 mistakable language, he declares that all the blood is sent by the con- 

 traction of the heart from the right ventricle through the pulmonary 

 artery into the lungs, where it is changed from dark to red in color by 

 the atmospheric air, and thence returned to the left side of the heart 

 through the j^ulmonary veins which is strictly true. Servetus denied 

 the old doctrine of Galen, that the liver was the seat of sanguifica- 

 tion, and declared it to be the lungs. 



Thus it is seen that, long before the day of Harvey, there was a 

 man of genius occupied with this great subject of the circulation of 

 the blood, and that man was Michael Servetus. 



I will add but a word to this sketch, already too long, in explana- 

 tion of the occurrence of these physiological considerations in a meta- 

 physical treatise of this kind. Servetus was discussing the Scriptural 

 assertion that the soul is in the blood, that the soul is the blood 

 itself; and hence, as Flourens states the case, "' Since the soul is in 

 the blood,' says Servetus, 'to know how the soul is formed it is 

 necessary to know how the blood is formed ; and, to leaini this, we 

 must see how it moves. ' " 



But Servetus was not equally clear in his views of the general or 

 systemic circulation. " He speaks confidently of the nerves being 

 continuations of the arteries, and describes, with grave precision, how 

 the air passes from the nose into the ventricles of the brain, and how 

 the devil takes the same route to lay siege to the soul." ' 



Realdo Columbus (1544-"77). This celebrated anatomist, one of 

 the best of that illustrious line which gave glory to the medical school 

 of Padua in the sixteenth century, was a native of the city of Cre- 

 mona, which is about fifty miles from Milan, in Italy. He flourished 

 about the year 1544, and was a pupil of the renowned Vesalius. Co- 

 lumbus made several important discoveries and improvements in the 

 knowledge of anatomy. He rediscovered the pulmonary circulation 



' " Blackwood's Edlnhurgh Magazine, August, 1858, p. 151. 



