The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 401 



arteries. After Galen s time, it was believed that 

 the dark blood nourishes such plebeian organs as 

 the liver, while the bright blood nourishes such 

 lordly organs as the brain, and that the inter 

 change takes place in the heart ; until the six 

 teenth century, when Vesalius proved that the 

 interchange does not take place in the heart, and 

 the martyr Servetus proved that it does take place 

 in the lungs; and so on till 1619, when Harvey 

 discovered that dark blood is brought by the veins 

 to the right side of the heart, and thence driven 

 into the lungs, where it becomes bright and flows 

 into the left side of the heart, thence to be pro 

 pelled throughout the body in the arteries. That 

 it then grows dark and returns through the veins 

 Harvey believed, but no one could tell how, until, 

 forty years later, Malpighi with his microscope de 

 tected the capillaries. Now to talk about Shake 

 speare discerning as if by instinct a truth which 

 Harvey afterward discovered is simply silly. In 

 stead of showing rare scientific knowledge, his 

 remark about blood running in the veins is one 

 that anybody might have made. 



This is a fair specimen of the ignorant way 

 in which doting commentators have built up an 

 impossible Shakespeare, until at last they have 

 provoked a reaction. Sooner or later the question 



