114 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



the blood, that the heart is actually the centre of the vascular system. And 

 in regard to the relation of the lungs to the heart, he maintains with his 

 teacher Columbus that the blood passes through the lungs from the right to 

 the left side of the heart — a process which he for the first time calls cir- 

 culation. But his servility to the authority of Aristotle prevents him from 

 taking advantage of either his precursors' or his own progress in this field 

 of research. He dares not abandon the theory of the pores in the heart wall, 

 but, on the contrary, admits that some of the blood goes that way; he ob- 

 serves that when a vein is tied, it fills below and not above the ligature, 

 but he does not venture to draw the conclusion that the blood-stream in 

 the veins always leads to the heart — this he believes takes place during 

 sleep, but not in a waking condition — and so the existence of the "vital 

 spirit" in the blood naturally takes the first place in his investigations. His 

 ponderous and involved presentation of his case — vague, too, in compari- 

 son with Servet's brief and explicit style — has enabled his admirers to 

 interpret his statements as it suits their purposes, but just as none of his 

 contemporaries saw in him one who had revolutionized knowledge of the 

 vascular system — a fact which he himself, Catholic and papal favourite as 

 he was, would hardly have dared to admit — so there must in truth be a 

 partisan and chauvinistic spirit in those of posterity who would ascribe to 

 him the honour of an idea which he himself neither clearly expressed nor 

 ever definitely claimed. 



X. Harvey 



Besides those of whom we have given account above, there were during 

 the Renaissance, as has been said, quite a large number of anatomical writers 

 who made a study of the construction and function of the vascular system, 

 in vain attempts to bring order out of the chaos to which the inaccurate 

 conception of the ancient biologists had reduced the problem. The necessity 

 of a solution was generally acknowledged; several had been on the right 

 road, but had stopped prematurely. Then William Harvey took the decisive 

 step and solved the hard problem in one stride. 



William Harvey was born at Folkestone, on the south coast of England, 

 in the year 1578, of respected and well-to-do parents, who gave their children 

 a sound education. Having taken a philosophical degree at Cambridge, 

 Harvey made a number of journeys and eventually came to Padua, where 

 at that time Fabrizio had begun to attract pupils from far and near. Harvey 

 joined them, and after four years of study took the degree of doctor of 

 medicine. Returning to England, he settled down in London and started a 

 medical practice. He practised in hospitals, was elected a member of the 



