DISCOVERY OF CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. 301 



six yeai's after Servetus's ill-fated book was printed, and unquestiona- 

 bly without any knowledge of what was in it ; for it does not appear 

 that the discovery by Servetus was known to the world, or produced 

 any influence whatever upon any individual, OAving to the character 

 of the work in which it appeared, and to its thorough destruction by 

 fire. 



The description which Columbus gives of the circulation of the 

 blood through the lungs is very complete, clear, and concise. " Be- 

 tween the two ventricles is the septum through which it is believed 

 the blood passes from the right to the left ; but this is a great mistake, 

 for the blood is carried by the arterial vein into the Ivmgs ; thence it 

 passes, with the air, by the venous artery, into the left ventricle of the 

 heart, which no one has yet seen." 



His work, " De Re Anatomica," was published in 1559. Columbus 

 died in 1577. 



Andreas C^salpinus (1519-1603). This third aspirant for the 

 glory of discovering the pulmonary circulation was born at Arezzo, 

 thirty-eight miles from Florence, Italy, about the year 1519. He was 

 an eminent philosopher, a celebrated botanist, and a distinguished 

 physiologist. He was for many years a professor at Pisa, and subse- 

 quently called to Rome, where he also jirofessed, and received the 

 appointment of first physician to Pope Clement VHI. He spent the 

 last years of his life in Rome, where he died February 23, 1603. 



The great naturalist Linnaeus styled Ctesalpinus the first systematic 

 writer on botany, and followed his classification in many particulars, 

 making it the basis of his own. The history of the physical sciences 

 gives more than one example of the discovery of an important fact 

 by two or more persons, in different places and at difierent dates, each 

 without previous knowledge of what the other had observed. So do 

 we find it in this instance, Csesalpinus rediscovered the jiulmonary 

 circulation without knowing that both Servetus and Columbus had 

 each previously and independently discovered the same, for he no- 

 where alludes to them ; and he was too noble and honorable a man to 

 bedeck himself with glories not his own. 



Moreover, this man was the first who ever employed the felicitous 

 and expressive words, " the circulation of the blood." 



"This circulation,^'' said he, " which carries the blood from the 

 right heart through the lung into the left, corresponds perfectly with 

 the disposition of the parts. For each ventricle has two vessels : one 

 by which the blood arrives, and the other by which it departs. The 

 vessel by which the blood arrives at the right ventricle is the vena 

 cava ; that by which it leaves is the pulmonary artery. The vessels 

 which pour the blood into the left ventricle are the pulmonary veins ; 

 the vessel which affords it exit is the aorta.'''' 



No man can describe it more accurately. But Cnesalpinus did not 

 stop here. He was the first and only one before Harvey who gave the 



