56 Borelli and the Influence [lect. 



or animal, ever seeking to explain those processes by what the 

 spirits effected, Harvey left these spirits entirely on one side ; 

 as we have seen, in one passage only in his book does he refer 

 to them, and then simply to dismiss them as irrelevant. On 

 the other hand he in like manner made no appeal, as the so- 

 called philosophers of his time and of times before had done, to 

 the general properties of matter, to the phenomena presented 

 by all things, whether living or not living. There is no 

 attempt in his book to solve the problems of the living body 

 by an appeal to what we now call physical and chemical laws. 

 His work, as I have said, is purely and strictly physiological. 



And indeed when Harvey began his studies there was no 

 exact science of physics or of chemistry to which he could 

 appeal. There was plenty of philosophising about nature, and as 

 we shall see, the foundations of chemistry were being laid; but 

 there was no sound body of truth, which he could call in to his 

 help. In one respect the science of living things was at this 

 epoch ahead of that of things not alive, for the latter had no 

 such solid basis as was already supplied to the former by 

 anatomy. 



During Harvey's lifetime however, even while he was 

 labouring at his great work, an important change in this 

 respect was taking place. During the early part of the seven- 

 teenth century the science of physics sprang into being, and a 

 little later on rational chemistry began to emerge from a 

 mystic alchemy. No sooner had these two sciences come to 

 the front, than they were pressed sometimes wisely, sometimes 

 unwisely into the science of physiology, sometimes wisely, to 

 the great profit of physiology as an independent science, some- 

 times unwisely, whereby the school of physiology proper, the 

 school of Vesalius and Harvey, was split up into the school of 

 those who proposed to explain all the phenomena of the body 

 and to cure all its ills on physical and mathematical principles, 

 the iatro-mathematical or iatro-physical school, and into the 

 school of those who proposed to explain all the same phenomena 

 as mere chemical events, the iatro-chemical school. 



When Harvey reached Padua in 1598, and conversed as he 

 doubtless did with members of the University other than those 



