34 THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 



In the oft-quoted statement that Harvey, ' conquering 

 envy, hath established a new doctrine in his lifetime,' 

 Hobbes was right so far as England and Holland are 

 concerned. But it was far otherwise in France, where 

 it met with a bitter and protracted hostility. The 

 Medical School of the University of Paris, at the time 

 one of the best-organized and most important in Europe, 

 declined to accept the circulation of the blood during 

 his lifetime and for some years after his death. The 

 history of the period is pictured for us in vivid colours 

 in that journal intime which Gui Patin kept up with his 

 friends, Spohn and Falconet of Lyons and the Belins 

 (pere et fils). With all his faults, particularly his scan- 

 dalous lack of charity, one cannot but feel the keenest 

 sympathy with this dear old man. Devoted to his 

 saints, Hippocrates and Galen, Fernel and Duret, and 

 to his teachers, Pietre and Riolan, to him the circulation 

 of the blood was never more than an ingenious paradox. 

 To such a lover of books and of good literature every- 

 thing can be forgiven, and in his letters we follow with 

 deepest interest his vigorous campaign against his dear 

 enemies, the Cuisiniers arabesques, who had enslaved 

 people and physicians alike, the haemophobes, the 

 chemists, the astrologers and the stibiate, or as he calls 

 it, the Stygiate group. To him the Koran was less 

 dangerous than the works of Paracelsus, the appearance 

 of the new Geneva edition of which he deeply deplores. 

 Reverence for Galen and' friendship with Riolan, rather 

 than any deep interest in the question, inspired his 

 opposition. To him the new doctrine was ridiculous, 

 and it was he who called the partisans of it circulateurs 

 in allusion to the Latin word, circulator, meaning char- 

 latan. In 1652 he writes to Spohn that the question is 

 still open whether the blood passes through the septum 



