HIS WORKS. Ixxi 



into the harness of Aristotle, and taking the bit of Fabricius 

 between his teeth ; and then, either assuming the ideas of the 

 former as premises, or those of the latter as topics of discussion 

 or dissent, he labours on endeavouring to find Nature in 

 harmony with the Stagyrite, or at variance with the professor 

 of Padua for, in spite of many expressions of respect and de- 

 ference for his old master, Harvey evidently delights to find 

 Fabricius in the wrong. Finally, so possessed is he by scho- 

 lastic ideas, that he winds up some of his opinions upon animal 

 reproduction by presenting them in the shape of logical syllo- 

 gisms. 



The age of Harvey, then, was not competent to produce a 

 work on generation, it was still an impossible undertaking. 

 Yet has Harvey written a remarkable book ; one that teems 

 with interesting observation, and that presents the author to 

 us in the character of the elegant writer, the scholar, and the 

 poet as well as the discoverer if, indeed, poet and dis- 

 coverer, though variously applied, be not identical terms. 

 Besides the points already referred to, as immediately con- 

 nected with his subject, we here find Harvey anticipating 

 modern surgery, by applying a ligature to the main artery of 

 a tumour which he wished to extirpate, and so making its 

 subsequent removal much more easy. Here, too, we find him, a 

 century and a half before his contemporaries, in the most rapidly 

 progressive period in the history of human knowledge, throw- 

 ing out the first hint of the true use of the lungs. Hitherto 

 the lungs had been regarded as surrounding the heart for the 

 purpose of ventilating the blood and tempering or moderating 

 its heat, the heart being viewed as the focus or hearth of the 

 innate heat ; and Harvey himself generally uses language in 

 harmony with these ideas ; but in one instance, the lightning of 

 genius giving him a glimpse of the truth, he says, " Air is 

 given neither for the cooling nor the nutrition of animals * * * 



