146 



NATURE 



[Jime 6, 1878. 



to the memory of Harvey and to the reputation of the 

 College of Physicians, while Lord Cardwell spoke with 

 much satisfaction of the legislation resulting from the 

 investigations of the Commission on Vivisection. The 

 speech of the evening, however, was undoubtedly that of 

 Prof. Huxley, in responding to the toast of the evening, 

 " The Memory of Harvey," proposed in happy terms by 

 the President. Prof. Huxley replied as follows : — 



Mr. President, — In attempting to fulfil the task you 

 have imposed upon me, I am mindful that I address 

 myself to an audience which is already familiar with 

 William Harvey's claims to the honour which we are 

 assembled to show him. For, within these walls, the 

 memory of your illustrious Fellow and chief benefactor, 

 is kept perennially green by the customary piety of the 

 speaker of the annual oration which Harvey founded ; 

 and his merits have been placed before you, with ex- 

 haustive completeness, by a long succession of able and 

 eloquent orators. Even if the time and place were fitted 

 for a disquisition on these topics, I could not hope to 

 be able to add to the facts already known, or to place 

 them before you in a new light. And, happily, this is 

 not my function ; I hare to act simply as your remem- 

 brancer, to play the part of the herald who announces 

 the familiar titles of a monarch on a state occasion. 



Harvey's titles are three — he was the discoverer of the 

 circulation of the blood; he wrote the "Exercitatio de 

 Motu Cordis et Sanguinis"; he formulated anew the 

 theory of epigenesis, and thereby founded the modern 

 doctrine of development. 



His first and, in general estimation, his greatest title to 

 our honour has been challenged ; but only to the con- 

 fusion of the challengers. A century ago, your Fellow, 

 Dr. Lawrence, in the excellent memoir prefaced to the 

 College edition of Harvey's works, met the arguments of 

 those who had, up to that time, attempted to dim his fame, 

 with a solid refutation, which has never been answered and 

 to my mind remains unanswerable. In our own day. Dr. 

 Willis has stated the facts of the case, and deduced the in- 

 evitable conclusion, with no less force and cogency. And, 

 having taken some pains to get at the truth of the matter 

 myself, I may state my clear conviction that Harvey 

 stands almost alone among great scientific discoverers, 

 not so much that, as Hobbes said, he lived to see the doc- 

 trine he propounded received into the body of universally 

 accepted truth, but because that doctrine was both abso- 

 lutely original, and absolutely new. I have yet to meet 

 with a single particle of evidence to show that, before 

 Harvey declared the fact that the blood is in con- 

 stant circular motion, there was so much as a suspi- 

 cion on the part of any of his predecessors or con- 

 temporaries that such is the case. Neither in Galen, nor 

 in Servetus, nor in Realdus Columbus, nor in Ceesalpinus, 

 is there a hint that a given portion of blood sent out from 

 the left ventricle, passes through the body and the lungs, 

 and returns to the place from whence it started ; yet this 

 is the essence of Harvey's discovery. 



Hence when we hear of pompous inscriptions being 

 put up in Spain to Michael Servetus, " the discoverer of 

 the circulation," or in Italy to Csesalpinus "the dis- 

 coverer of the circulation;" it is well to recollect that 

 churchyards have no monopoly of unhistorical inscrip- 

 tions. Indeed, have we not ourselves, within easy walk- 

 ing distance, that famous monument, the subject of Pope's 

 scathing but just lines — 



" And London's column, soaring to the sides 

 Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies." 



Sir, I have no sympathy with Chauvinism of any kind, 

 but, surely, of all kinds that is the worst which obtrudes 

 pitiful national jealousies and rivalries into the realm of 

 science. We will not shame ourselves by permitting the 

 fact of Harvey's English birth to enter into the consider- 

 ation of his claims as a discoverer ; but those claims 

 once established beyond dispute, it is, I hop;, something 



nobler and better than mere national vanity which brings 

 us together to celebrate his birth ; to take an honest pride 

 that such a man came of our English race ; and as, I hope, 

 to feel the deep responsibility which is laid upon us to 

 have a care that the stock which in the same hundred 

 years bourgeoned out in a Harvey and a Newton, shall 

 not have its capacity for producing like growths in the 

 present and in the future, starved by devotion to mere 

 material interests, or stunted by ignorant outcries against 

 scientific investigation. 



The second title which I have claimed for Harvey is 

 that of author of the "Exercitatio de Motu Cordis et 

 Sanguinis." And that title is, happily, quite indis^ 

 putable. But some may suppose that I have so far 

 thrown myself into the spirit of my assumed office as to 

 insert a superfluous appellation — a sort of " Defender of 

 the Faith." However, this would be an error. Harvey 

 might have discovered the circular course of the blood ; 

 he might have given sufficient evidence of his discovery ; 

 and yet he might have been quite incapable of writing 

 that little essay of fifty pages which no physiologist of 

 the present day can read without wonder and delight. 

 For, not only is it a typical example of sound scientific 

 method and of concise and clear statement ; but, in 

 addition to the evidence of the course of the blood 

 through the body, it contains the first accurate analysis 

 of the motions of the heart ; the first clear conception of 

 the mechanism of that organ as a pumping apparatus ; 

 the first application of quantitative considerations to a 

 physiological problem ; and the first deductive explana- 

 tion of the phenomena of the pulse and of the uses of 

 the valves of the veins. " Libellus aureus," Haller called 

 it — and never was epithet more aptly bestowed. 



Harvey's third title to honour is the authorship of the 

 " Exercitationes de Generatione." In this treatise 

 Harvey grapples with two of the most difficult pro- 

 blems of biology — the physiological problem of genera- 

 tion and the morphological problem of development. 

 It was simply impossible that he should solve these 

 problems, for they can be approached only through the 

 microscope ; and Harvey was dead before Hooke, 

 Malpighi, Swammerdam, or Leeuwenhoek, the fathers 

 of microscopy, began their work. He saw the circulation 

 in shrimps "ope perspicillo " indeed — but the perspi- 

 cillum was a mere handglass. Hence it is not wonderful 

 that Harvey's theory of fecundation is altogether erro- 

 neous : and that he is no less mistaken respecting the 

 nature of the parts of the embryo which first make their 

 appearance and the mode of their formation. 



Nevertheless, just as it is the fate of dulness to be 

 blind to the significance of justly observed facts, so is it 

 the rare privilege of men of the highest genius to discern 

 the true light among the ignesfatui of error. They know 

 the truth, as Falstaff discerned the true prince among his 

 pot companions, by instinct. Explain the matter how 

 we will, it is an indubitable fact that though Harvey's 

 fundamental observations were either inadequate or 

 erroneous, some of his most important general conclu- 

 sions express the outcome of modern research. 



For a whole century Harvey's successors, even though 

 the illustrious Haller was among them, went wrong when 

 Harvey was right ; and though Caspar Wolff returned to 

 Harvey's views and thereby laid the foundation of 

 modern embryology, the definitive triumph of the doc- 

 trine of epigenesis is the result of labours which have 

 been effected within the memory of living men. 



Such appear to me to be the chief claims of Harvey to 

 be held in everlasting honour among men of science. 

 We know that they represent a mere fraction of what he 

 did. But the violence of an unhappy time has robbed u& 

 of the rest. I should trespass unwarrantably on your 

 time if I insisted on the apphcations of Harvey's disco- 

 veries to medicine and surgery in the presence of those 

 whose daily avocations bear witness to them. 



