i8 THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 



mental attitude is expressed in a well-known poem of 



Browning's : 



those divine men of old time 



Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point 

 The outside verge that rounds our faculty, 

 And where they reached who can do more than reach ? 



Willing to correct observations or to extend anatomy 

 by careful dissection, it was too much to expect from 

 them either a new interpretation of the old facts or 

 a knowledge of the new method by which those facts 

 could be correctly interpreted. 



The ingenious explanation which Fabricius gave of 

 the use of the valves of the veins to serve as dams or 

 checks to the flow of the blood, so that it would not 

 irrigate too rapidly and overflow the peripheral vessels 

 to the deprivation of the upper parts of the limbs 

 shows how the old physiology dominated the most 

 distinguished teacher of the time in the most distin- 

 guished school of Europe. This may have been the 

 very suggestion to his pupil of the more excellent way. 

 Was it while listening to this ingenious explanation of 

 his master that, in a moment of abstraction dimly 

 dreaming, perhaps, of an English home far away and 

 long forsaken that there came to Harvey a heaven-sent 

 moment, a sudden inspiration, a passing doubt nursed 

 for long in silence, which ultimately grew into the great 

 truth of I6I6? 1 



The works of Vesalius, of Fallopius, and of Fabricius 

 effected a revolution in anatomy, but there was not at 

 the close of the sixteenth century a new physiology. 

 Though he had lost an anatomical throne, Galen ruled 



1 Boyle states that in the only conversation he ever had with 

 him, Harvey acknowledged that a study of the valves of the veins 

 had led him to the discovery of the circulation of the blood. 



