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32 Harvey and the [lect. 



nature to our knowledge of the structure or working of the 

 animal body ; he was indeed not an observer, but a theorist 

 and perhaps even more a disputer. His real passion seems to 

 have been for theology, his studies in which led him for a while 

 into a conflict with the church, though he ultimately recanted his 

 heresy. His favourite doctrine was that the world was peopled 

 with and indeed ruled by invisible demons, the apparently 

 voluntary acts of every man being in reality the handiwork of 

 the man's own familiar spirit. In all that related to medicine 

 he early took up an attitude of opposition to Galen, carrying 

 it almost to the extent of maintaining that whatever Galen 

 affirmed was wrong, and that whatever Galen opposed was 

 right. It would seem that it was this spirit of the controver- 

 sialist rather than any careful observation of and deduction from 

 phenomena which led him in his rambling discursive and 

 obscurely written philosophical and medical treatises, his 

 Quaestiones peripateticae (1571), and his Questiones Medicae 

 (1593), to enunciate views, which however he arrived at them 

 certainly foreshadowed or even anticipated those which were 

 later on to be established on a sound basis. 



In his Peripatetic Questions he seemed to have hold of 

 several points relating to the true action of the heart. He says 

 for instance Lib. v. Quaest. 4 : 



" For the membranes are so placed at the orifices that they 

 " are opened when the heart is dilated and are closed when the 

 " heart is contracted. It follows therefore either that the lung 

 " and heart must be dilated at the same time and constricted at 

 " the same time ; or the entrance of the spirits must take place 

 " while we breathe out. For if the heart happens to be dilated 

 " while the lung is constricted, and to be constricted while it is 

 " dilated, the air will enter the heart when we breathe out and 

 " issue from the heart when we breathe in ; which is impossible 

 " for the movements are in a contrary direction. To say, however, 

 " that the heart and lung are always dilated at the same time 

 " and contracted at the same time is opposed to facts, for we can 

 " regulate our breathing by our will, but the beat of the heart 

 " is wholly beyond our power ; and even when we are breathing 

 " involuntarily, breathing is in most cases slower than the pulse. 



