xlviii THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



the subject of the circulation, to which it is said that Riolan 

 when face to face with the propounder, made no objection. 



Riolan is by no means totally opposed to a. circulation of 

 the blood; he would only limit it to certain arbitrary regions, 

 into which he divides the body : whilst it goes forward in one, 

 it has no existence in another. The nature of his ideas can 

 be gathered from Harvey's comments on them in his First 

 Disquisition, addressed to the Coryphaeus of Anatomists, as 

 he politely designates the Parisian professor. 



Having disposed of the original notions of the author of 

 the 'Encheiridium Anatomicum/ in this first disquisition, 

 Harvey, in his second, returns to his own views, which he 

 proceeds still further to illustrate and confirm by additional 

 arguments, observations, and experiments. In this admirable 

 essay, we obtain innumerable glimpses of the clearness of 

 Harvey's judgment, of his admirable powers of observation, 

 and the diligent and excellent use he made of them ; we at 

 the same time become aware of the great loss we have sus- 

 tained through the destruction of his Medical Observations. 

 Riolan, in his Encheiridium, proposed to point out in the 

 structure of the healthy body the seats of the various diseases, 

 and to discuss their nature in conformity with the opinions 

 that had been entertained of them. This was obviously at 

 once a barren and an impracticable route : the matters he had 

 in hand could never have been other than abstractions, and 

 his own observations criticisms on opinions, never on facts. 

 How much more natural and judicious the -course which 

 Harvey proposes to himself, when he informs us that in his 

 ' Medical Anatomy* he meant, " from the many dissections 

 he had made of the bodies of persons worn out by serious and 

 strange affections, to relate how and in what way the internal 

 organs were changed in their situation, size, structure, figure, 

 consistency, and other sensible qualities, from their natural 



