THE GROWTH OF TRUTH 35 



of the heart or through the lungs. In 1659 he promises 

 to send him a work of Vinean against the circulation. 1 

 More extraordinary still is the fact that as late as 1670, 

 twelve years after Harvey's death, the thesis of one 

 Cordelle, a bachelor of medicine, publicly discussed the 

 circulation of the blood, and Gui Patin, who presided, 

 decided in the negative. The fiction of an ingenious 

 narrator, le doux songe of Harvey, are the terms in 

 which he speaks of it. The whole passage is worth 

 quoting as possibly the last public denouncement of what 

 seemed a rank heresy to the old Galenists : ' Supposer 

 que le sang se meut toujours circulairement, que de la 

 veine cave ascendante il tombe dans 1'oreillette droite du 

 cceur, que de la il aille traverser toute la substance du 

 poumon pour retomber de la dans 1'oreillette gauche en 

 passant par la veine pulmonaire, et qu'enfin de la il soit 

 projete dans 1'aorte et toutes les arteres qui le feront 

 passer dans les veines et dans le cceur, lui faisant par 

 ce moyen suivre un circuit, voila le doux songe de 

 Harvey, la fiction d'un narrateur ingenieux, mais nulle- 

 ment prouvee par 1' evidence. La circulation du sang, 

 son transport circulaire par les vaisseaux, c'est 1'enfante- 

 ment d'un esprit oisif, un vrai nuage qu'embrassent les 

 Ixions pour procreer les Centaurs et les monstres.' 2 



As I said, we can forgive a great deal to the man who 

 has left us such a picture of seventeenth-century life, 

 drawn, all unconsciously, with a master hand; and 

 through the mists of prejudice and hate we can recognize 

 the good sense which had the courage to protest against 

 the forfanterie arabesque et be'zoardesque in much of the 

 therapeutics of the day. 



1 Lettres, vol. i, p. 324, Edition 1694. 



2 Gui Patin, par Felix Larrieu. Paris, 1889. 



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