HIS WORKS. xlvii 



sertations in defence of the circulation, we perceive the apostles 

 of all new truths, namely, the youthful, at work. Were there 

 not successive generations of men, the world would stand still; 

 the death of the individual was not merely a necessary condi- 

 tion to the enjoyment of life by successive generations, but 

 essential also to the onward progress of mankind. No man 

 who had attained to the age of 40 years, it is said, was found 

 to adopt the doctrine of the circulation ; it had to win its 

 way under the safeguard of the Drakes and Leroys especially, 

 that is to say, of the youthful and unprejudiced spirits of 

 the age. 



Twenty years after the publication of the 'Exercitatio de 

 Motu Cordis et Sanguinis/ Joannes Biolanus, the younger, was 

 deliveredof his 'Encheiridium Anatomicum' (8vo. Lugd. Batav. 

 10:18), in which he makes a vain attempt to supplant the 

 Harveian doctrine by a new and most extraordinary one of his 

 own, so incongruous and unlikely, that in these days we are 

 irresistibly led to form no very high estimate of the intellect 

 that could have engendered it. It looks to us, indeed, 

 at this time, like condescension on the part of the great 

 English anatomist, that he noticed the abortion of such a 

 tyro in animal physics as the French professor here approves 

 himself. Harvey's genius could surely have felt no real 

 respect for the illogical intellect of Biolan. But Harvey, 

 when he noticed Riolan' s publication, was in want of a good 

 occasion for a farther development of his own views ; and so 

 he seized on the Parisian professor, respectable from his posi- 

 tion in the university, and as physician to the queen mother 

 of France, and made him his vehicle his placard bearer. 

 Harvey, besides, was personally acquainted with Riolan, who 

 had accompanied Mary de Medicis to England on a visit 

 to her daughter the Queen of Charles the First ; on which 

 occasion Harvey and Riolan had even held conversations on 



