THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 41 



terms which they said had no more to do with physic 

 on the human body than a carpenter has in making 

 Venice treacle or curing a fever'. Once accepted, men 

 had a feeling that so important a discovery must change 

 all the usual conceptions of disease. As has been said 

 before, Harvey tells that he had in preparation a Practice 

 of Medicine conformable to his Thesis of the Circulation of 

 the Blood, and it soon became customary to put in the 

 title-pages of works some reference to the new doctrine. 

 Even Riolan's Opuscula Anatomia makes an allusion to 

 it. Walaeus, a keen defender of Harvey, published in 

 1660 a little compendium of practice ad circulationem 

 sanguinis adornata, but there is nothing in it to suggest 

 any radical change in treatment. Rolfinck's Disserta- 

 tiones Anatomicae, 1650, embracing the older and more 

 recent views in medicine are ad circulationem accommo- 

 datae, and even as late as 1690 the well-known anatomy 

 of Dionis was suivant la circulation. With the loss of 

 his work on the Practice of Medicine it is impossible to 

 say whether Harvey's own practice was modified in any 

 way. To part from the spirits and humours must have 

 left his attitude of mind very sceptical, and that his 

 1 therapeutic way ' was not admired (as Aubrey tells us) 

 speaks for a change which may have set many against 

 him. More important than any influence upon treat- 

 ment was the irresistible change in the conceptions of 

 disease caused by destruction of the doctrine of spirits 

 and humours, which had prevailed from the days of 

 Hippocrates. While Harvey, as he says, had in places 

 to use the language of physiology, that is, the language 

 of the day, he makes it very clear, particularly in the 

 second letter to Riolan, that he will have none of the 

 old doctrine to which the de Motu Cordis dealt the death 

 blow. 



