1 THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



tion, that he is able to throw additional light on it by new and 

 ingenious considerations and experiments. 



Harvey appears to have been pleased with SlegeFs produc- 

 tion ; for by and by he sends the Hamburger his new work on 

 Generation, accompanied by an admirable letter, which has 

 happily been preserved. 1 No one in reading that remarkable 

 epistle could suppose that the pen which set it down was in 

 the hand of a man in the 75th year of his age. 



The young men of 1628 and 1630, who had been educated 

 in unbelief of the circulation, were now coming into possession 

 of professorial chairs and places of distinction ; and having 

 long escaped from leading-strings and made inquiry for them- 

 selves, were beginning in many of the European universities to 

 proclaim the better faith through further knowledge that had 

 sprung up within them. Harvey had himself received the 

 seeds of his discovery in Italy; but the fructifying mother was 

 slow to recognize him whom she had so powerfully concurred to 

 form. It was not till 1651 that Harvey's views were in any 

 way admitted beyond the Alps, when Trullius, a Roman pro- 

 fessor, expounded and taught them. About the same time, 

 John Pecquet, 2 of Dieppe, and Thomas Bartholin, the Dane, 3 

 men of original mind in the one case, of extensive learning and 

 great research in the other, gave in their adhesion to the new 

 doctrine, and spread it far and near by their writings. The 

 victory for the circulation may finally be said to have been won, 

 when Plempius, of Louvain, the old antagonist of Descartes 

 on the subject, retracted all he had formerly written against it, 

 convinced of its truth, as he so candidly informs us, by the very 

 pains, he took to satisfy himself of its erroneousness, and publicly 

 proclaimed his conversion : < ' Primum mihi hoc inventum non 



1 Vide p. 596. 



* Experimenta nova Anatomica. Acced. de Motu Sanguinis Diss.,8vo, Paris, 1651. 

 3 Anatomia ex Casp. Bartholini Parent. Institut. ad Sanguinis Circulationem, 

 tertium Reformata, 8vo, Leid. 1651. 



