68 HERBERT ALBERT RATNER 



stitution of its muscular fibers and the fabric of its moveable 

 parts " '') , 



2. and is composed of muscular tissue and other tissue com- 

 ponents necessary to the parts (the Tnaterial caiise) , 



3. for the sake of circulating the blood (the final cause or 

 function) 



4. by contraction (the efficient cause of circulation) .^* 



^* Ibid., ch. 17, p. 82. 



^* That the last chapter is an integral and important part of Harvey's classic is 

 not the common position. Leake presents a typical viewpoint when he states that 

 " The last three chapters add little to the significance of the demonstration " 

 (Chauncey D. Leake, op. cit., Translator's Preface, p. x) . But here it seems that 

 Leake has a limited appreciation of the purpose of the work as explicitly stated by 

 Harvey, and of the true scientific nature of the anatomical exercise employed by 

 Harvey. As to the purpose of the work it should first be recalled that the title of 

 this classic makes clear that it is an anatomical exercise, and that it concerns 

 the motion of the heart as well as the motion of the blood. Secondly, that the 

 opening statement of the Introduction states that Harvey is discussing " the motion, 

 pulse, action, use and utility of the heart and arteries," and of Chapter 1 that his 

 purpose is to discover " the motions, use and utility of the heart." That Leake 

 does not appreciate the comprehensiveness of the anatomical exercise is reflected in 

 his translation, in which he reduces action, use and utility to junction in the Intro- 

 duction, and M5e and utility to junction in Chapter 1. 



If we turn to the anatomical works of Fabricius, who was Harvey's teacher, we 

 find the following exposition of the anatomical exercise: "to treat first the dissection 

 or description of each organ, then its action, and finally its utilities, and in this 

 way present our entire knowledge of the organs as comprised in these three 

 divisions." He adds that he has followed " this path the more willingly because 

 those distinguished pioneers, Aristotle and Galen, have blazed the trail and, so 

 to speak, carried the torch before me on the way." (Fabricius, De Visione, voce, 

 auditu, Preface, translated by Howard B. Adelmann, The Embryological Treatises 

 oj Hieronymus Fabricius oj Aquapendente, Cornell University Press, 1942, p. 82). 

 Fabricius classifies the biological works of Aristotle and Galen in these three 

 divisions and states that " The third part, indeed, which discusses the utilities of 

 the whole, as well as of the parts of an organ, corresponds to the four books of 

 Aristotle's De partibus animalium [and] to that great work of Galen's, De usu 

 partium . . ." (ibid., p. 83) . 



When we turn to Aristotle's explication of the third part of the anatomical 

 exercise he states that " In the first place we must look at the constituent parts 

 of animals. For it is in a way relative to these parts, first and foremost, that 

 animals in their entirety differ from one another: either in the fact that some have 

 this or that, while they have not that or this; or by peculiarities of position or 

 arrangement; or by the differences that have been previously mentioned, depending 

 upon diversity of form, or excess or defect in this or that particular, or analogy, or 



