HIS WORKS. H 



placuit/' says the worthy Plerapius " This discovery did not 

 please me at all at first, as I publicly testified both by word of 

 mouth and in my writings; but by and by, when I gave myself up 

 with firmer purpose to refute and expose it, lo ! I refute and ex- 

 pose myself, so convincing, not to say merely persuasive, are the 

 arguments of the author : I examine the whole thing anew and 

 with greater care, and having at length made the dissection of 

 a few live dogs, I find that all his statements are most true." 1 



From the first promulgation of the doctrine of the circula- 

 tion, its progress towards ultimate general acknowledgment can 

 scarcely be said for a moment to have been interrupted. The 

 hostility of the Primeroses and Parisanuses and Riolans never 

 interfered with it in fact ; the more candid spirits were rather 

 led to inquire, by the virulence of these weak and inconsistent 

 opponents, who thus hastened the catastrophe of their own dis- 

 comfiture, and the triumph of the truth. If men's minds were 

 once in danger of being led astray, it was only for an instant, 

 and not so much through the opposition of enemies, as by an 

 erroneous generalization, which a short interval of time sufficed 

 to correct. Csecilius Folius, a Venetian physician, having met 

 with one of those anomalous instances of pervious foramen ovale 

 in an adult, immediately and without looking farther, jumped 

 to the conclusion that this structure or arrangement was 

 normal, and that the blood passed in all cases by the route he 

 had discovered, from the right to the left side of the heart. Many 

 Italians received with favour the account which Folius imme- 

 diately published of his discovery ; 2 and the natural philosopher, 

 Gassendi, having about the same period had another instance 

 of the kind which Folius encountered, shown to him, concurred 

 with this writer in his views, and by a variety of arguments 

 and objections, strove to damage, and did temporarily damage, 



1 Plempius, Fundamenta Medicinae, fol. Lovan. 1652, p. 128. 



2 Sanguinis a dextro in sinistrum Cordis Ventriculura defluentis facilis reperta 

 via, fol. Venet. 1639. 



