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XI PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE 381 
believed in it; among others our own great Harvey, 
the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. 
You will constantly find his name quoted, how- 
ever, as an opponent of the doctrine of spontaneous 
generation ; but the fact is, and you will see it if 
you will take the trouble to look into his works, 
Harvey believed it as profoundly as any man of 
his time; but he happened to enunciate a very 
curious proposition—that every living thing came 
from an egg; he did not mean to use the word in 
the sense in which we now employ it, he only 
meant to say that every living thing originated in 
a little rounded particle of organised substance ; 
and it is from this circumstance, probably, that 
the notion of Harvey having opposed the doctrine 
originated. Then came Redi, and he proceeded 
to upset the doctrine in a very simple manner. 
'He merely covered the piece of meat with some 
very fine gauze, and then he exposed it to the 
same conditions. The result of this was that no 
grubs or insects were produced; he proved that 
the grubs originated from the insects who came 
and deposited their eggs in the meat, and that 
they were hatched by the heat of the sun. By 
this kind of inquiry he thoroughly upset the 
doctrine of spontaneous generation, for his time 
at least. 
Then came the discovery and application of the 
microscope to scientific inquiries, which showed to 
naturalists that besides the organisms which they 
