HARVEY AND THE HEART 91 



sixteenth century, after he had spent six years at Cambridge, 

 we have to follow young Harvey to the most famous school 

 of anatomy then in Europe, the University of Padua, 

 which drew its students from Venice much in the same 

 way as Oxford and Cambridge now attract the youth 

 of London. Reaching that ancient university, he sought 

 out Fabricius, the Professor of Anatomy, a man already 

 past his sixtieth year and renowned far and wide for his 

 learning and discoveries. The lecture theatre in which 

 Harvey listened to him and watched him demonstrating 

 the various structures of the human body is still standing, 

 its narrow, time-worn seats rising tier upon tier. We are 

 to join Harvey in that theatre as he takes his place in a 

 jostling strange-costumed crowd of men, both young and 

 old, rich and poor, to listen to Fabricius while he explains 

 the course of the blood and the use of the heart. The 

 uses of the various parts of the human machine, we 

 find, are explained in a way which leaves no doubt or 

 obscurity in the minds of the audience. There was, 

 in the first place, the manufacture or concoction of 

 blood ; that was the duty of the stomach ; it concocted 

 food and turned it into blood, which was then passed on 

 to the liver by means of the portal vein (fig. 25). The 

 use of the liver was to transform the nutritive blood 

 received from the stomach into real blood, blood which 

 was endowed with " natural spirits " and therefore, being 

 living, was fit to nourish the tissues of the body. 

 Fabricius showed to his audience the two great veins 

 which issued from the liver and then traced them towards 

 all parts of the body. A great channel (the lower caval 

 vein) conveyed the blood downwards to nourish the lower 

 limbs ; another (the upper caval vein) issuing from above 

 the liver carried the blood into the upper half of the 

 body to nourish the arms and the head, neck, and brain. 

 As it passed through the thorax, the upper caval vein ran 

 directly through the right auricle of the heart (fig. 25). 

 Thus the use of the liver and the meaning of the dis- 

 tribution of veins to the utmost parts of the body were 

 fully explained ; they formed a blood system by which 



