n] 



Circulation of the Blood. 



41 



of the need of putting these to the test of examination, had 

 boldly cleared the way for future research. Even if he had 

 not read Servetus, he must have been familiar with Columbus's 

 book ; and both of these (we may lay on one side for the moment 

 the possible connection between the two) had declared against 

 the mysterious passage through the solid septum and in favour 

 of the flow through the lungs, from the right side to the left 

 side of the heart. He could not have been ignorant of the 

 writings of Csesalpinus, who had so boldly expounded his views 

 as to the action of the heart, and the flow along the veins from 

 the tissues to the heart. He himself had contributed that 

 knowledge of the valves of the veins, which rightly used 

 overturned the whole Galenic doctrine. Yet it was then, as it is 

 now to-day, as it has been in every period between then and 

 now, as it was in all times before, and as it will be so far as we 

 can see in all times to come. So strong was the hold upon 

 his mind of conceptions coming down from the past, that 

 Fabricius's eyes were blinded to facts staring him in the face, and 

 his ears were deaf to voices crying out new views. At almost 

 the very parting of the ways he continued calmly to preach 

 that the old way was the better one, the way in which men 

 should walk. 



It was left for a pupil of his to seize that which he had just 

 failed to lay hold of, to weld together, as he was passing away, 

 into one sustained and convincing argument, the several links 

 which he and the rest had furnished, and nine years after his 

 death to make known to the world that true view of the 

 circulation which was the real beginning of modern physiology. 



I need not take up time by entering largely into the details 

 of the oft-told story of William Harvey's life. 



. Born at Folkesto ne, on the south coast of England, in April, 

 4578, just four years after Fabricius had published his treatise 

 on the valves of the veins, admitted to Gonville and Caius 

 College, Cambridge, in 1593, taking his degree in Arts in 

 JiSLJie left England the following year to study medicine 

 under the great master at Padua. There he spent the greater 

 part of^ four years^years very nearly overlapping the period 



