NA TURE 



481 



THURSDAY, MARCH 24, i{ 



A BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM HARVEY. 

 'Masters of Medicine. William Hari'ey. By D'Arcy 

 Power, F.S.A., F.R.C.S. Edited by Ernest Hart, 

 D.C.L. Grown 8vo. Pp. xi -I- 296. (London : T. 

 Fisher Unwin, 1897.). 



THERE is probably no name in the roll of European 

 physicians antecedent to our own time so familiarly 

 known as that of the discoverer of the circulation of the 

 blood. Harvey was one of the founders of the modern 

 method of investigating nature; and he takes rank with 

 -Galileo and Descartes among the select few who stand 

 ■-out as landmarks in the early history of exact science. 

 His life arid work have therefore an enduring interest 

 for all educated men. Dr. Willis's classical biography of 

 Harvey, published twenty years ago, was not cast in a 

 f)0pUlar mould, and is now almost out of print. It was 

 therefore time, and there was room, for a new Yxit of 

 Harvey; and the late Mr. Hart was fortunate in hrs 

 selection of Mr. D'Arcy Power for this task. Mr. Powet; 

 tells us in his preface : 



" It is not possible, nor have I attempted, in this 

 account of Harvey, to add much that is new. My 

 endeavour has been to give a picture of the man and to 

 explain in his own words, for they are always simple, 

 racy, and untechnical, the discovery which has placed 

 him in the forefront of the Masters of Medicine." 



Notwithstanding this modest disclaimer, Mr. Power has 

 succeeded in collecting a good deal of fresh collateral 

 information which throws much interesting side light on 

 the career and surroundings of Harvey. 



William Harvey was born in Folkestone in 1578. He 

 was the eldest son of an opulent Kentish yeoman, and 

 his career was never hampered by pecuniary difficulties. 

 His school boy days were passed at Canterbury. Thence 



"he migrated to Caius College, Cambridge, where he 



^graduated in arts in 1597, at the age of nineteen. There 

 were at that time no organised Schools of Medicine in 

 Britain, and Harvey had to look elsewhere for the means 

 of prosecuting his medical education. He chose Padua ; 

 and became a pupil of Fabricius— the foremost anatomist 

 of his day. Fabricius was. then engaged in perfecting 



•his discovery, or rather re-discovery, of the valves of the 

 veins. Fabricius, no doubt, demonstrated the existence 

 ■6f- these valves to his class ; and it may be inferred that 

 Harvey's interest in the motions of the heart and blood 

 ■was first awakened by these demonstrations. Fabricius 



-taught that the purpose of these valves was to prevent 

 <over-distension of the vessels when the blood passed from 

 .the larger into the smaller veins (a double error), whilst 

 they were not needed in the arteries because the blood 

 was always in a state of ebb and flow. It was reserved 

 ifor Harvey to point out their true use, and to indicate 



. their importance as an anatomical proof of the circula- 

 tion of the blood. 



Harvey spent four years at Padua, and obtained the 

 degree of Doctor of Medicine of that University. He 

 then settled in London, and came rapidly to the front. 

 At the age of twenty-nine he was elected Fellow of 

 the College of Physicians ; at thirty-one he became 

 NO. 1482, VOL. 57] 



physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital ; at thirty-seven 

 he was chosen Lumleian Lecturer on Anatomy to the 

 College of Physicians. About the same time he was 

 appointed Physician E.xtraordinary to James I., and 

 subsequently Physician in Ordinary to his successor 

 Charles I. These latter appointments gave Harvey 

 command of the herds of deer in the royal parks, for 

 the purpose of the vivisections and dissections which he 

 practised in the course of his researches on the motions 

 of the heart and blood, and in his investigations on 

 embryology. 



Harvey delivered his first course of Lumleian Lectures 

 in 1616. It was in these lectures that he first pro- 



: pounded his views on the circulation of the blood, and 

 demonstrated the anatomical and experimental evidence 



j on which his conclusions were based. These demonstra- 

 tions were, as he tells us, annually repeated at the Lum- 



i leian Lectures for nine successive years. It was only after 



I this long probation that Harvey ventured to give his 

 discoveries to the world. This he did in the form of a 

 small Latin quarto of 76 pages, entitled " Exercitatio 

 Anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis," published at 

 Frankfort in 1628. This little book is in several respects 

 a remarkable one. It constitutes the earliest record we 

 possess of a really scientific investigation in the domain 

 of biology based on systematic observation and ex- 

 periment. Although written 270 years ago, the work is 

 essentially modem in tone and method. It is, in fact, 

 the precursor and prototype of the scientific " mono- 

 graph" of our own day, and stands favourable com- 

 parison with the best master-pieces of recent times. In 

 this treatise Harvey established absolutely the fact of 

 the circulation of the blood, and the fact that the heart 

 was the propulsive agent in the movement. But he was 

 unable, from his want of a microscope, to indicate the 

 precise path along which the blood travelled from 

 the terminal arteries to the commencing veins. He 

 erroneously conjectured that the blood percolated the 

 organs and tissues as water percolates the earth and 

 produces springs and rivulets. In less than two years 

 after Harvey's death the improvements in the microscope 

 enabled Malpighi and Leeuenhoek to demonstrate the 

 completion of the circuit of the blood through the 

 capillaries in the web of the frog's foot. 



After the publication of his tieatise on the circulation, 

 Harvey seems to have concentrated himself, as regards 

 physiological work, on his investigations concerning the 

 generation of animals. He gradually accumulated an 

 immense amount of information on this subject, which 

 was eventually collected together and printed, towards 

 the close of Harvey's life, in a separate volume, under 

 the supervision of his friend Sir George Ent, with the 

 title of " Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium." 

 This book, though many times larger than the treatise 

 on the motions of the heart and blood, is incomparably 

 less satisfying. To the modern reader the reason of this 

 shortcoming is plain enough ; Harvey was stopped at 

 every critical point by his want of a larger magnifying 

 power. He had at his disposal only a pocket lens, which 

 magnified perhaps four diameters. He knew nothing, 

 and could know nothing, of the cellular elements of the 

 ovum, nor of the motile filaments which constitute the 

 essence of the spermatic fluid. 



Y 



