434 THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 



faults may have been, was one of the few English monarchs 

 who have shown a taste for art and science that Harvey 

 became his attached and devoted friend as well as servant ; 

 and that the king, on the other hand, did all he could to 

 advance Harvey's investigations. But, as you know, evil 

 times came on ; and Harvey, after the fortunes of his royal 

 master were broken, being then a man of somewhat ad- 

 vanced years over 60 years of age, in fact retired to the 

 society of his brothers in and near London, and among 

 them pursued his studies until the day of his death. 

 Harvey's career is a life which offers no salient points of 

 interest to the biographer. It was a life devoted to study 

 and investigation ; and it was a life the devotion of which 

 was amply rewarded, as I shall have occasion to point out 

 to you, by its results. 



Harvey, by the diversity, the variety, and the thorough- 

 ness of his investigations, was enabled to give an entirely 

 new direction to at least two branches and two of the 

 most important branches of what now-a-days we call 

 Biological Science. On the one hand, he founded all our 

 modern physiology by the discovery of the exact nature of 

 the motions of the heart, and of the course in which the 

 blood is propelled through the body ; and, on the other, 

 he laid the foundation of that study of development which 

 has been so much advanced of late years, and which con- 

 stitutes one of the great pillars of the doctrine of evolution. 

 This doctrine, I need hardly tell you, is now tending to 

 revolutionise our conceptions of the origin of living things, 

 exactly in the same way as Harvey's discovery of the cir- 

 culation in the seventeeth century revolutionised the 

 conceptions which men had previously entertained with 

 regard to physiological processes. 



It would, I regret, be quite impossible for me to attempt, 

 in the course of the time I can presume to hold you here, 

 to unfold the history of more than one of these great investi- 

 gations of Harvey. I call them " great investigations," 

 as distinguished from " large publications." I have in my 

 hand a little book, which those of you who are at a great 

 distance may have some difficulty in seeing, and which I 

 value very much. It is, I am afraid, sadly thumbed and 

 scratched with annotations by a very humble successor 

 and follower of Harvey. This little book is the edition of 

 1651 of the Exercitation.es de Generatione ; and if you 

 were to add another little book, printed in the same small 



