444 THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 



real importance, was one Realdus Columbus, who was 

 professor at Padua in the year 1559, and published a great 

 anatomical treatise. What Realdus Columbus did was 

 this ; once more resorting to the method of Galen, turning 

 to the living animal, experimenting, he came upon new facts, 

 and one of these new facts was that there was not merely a 

 subordinate communication between the blood of the right 

 side of the heart and that of the left side of the heart, through 

 the lungs, but that there was a constant steady current of 

 blood, setting through the pulmonary artery on the right 

 side, through the lungs, and back by the pulmonary veins 

 to the left side of the heart (Fig. 3). Such was the capital 

 discovery and demonstration of Realdus Columbus. He 

 is the man who discovered what is loosely called the pulmon- 

 ary circulation ; and it really is quite absurd, in the face of 

 the fact, that twenty years afterwards we find Ambrose 

 Par, the great French surgeon, ascribing this discovery 

 to him as a matter of common notoriety, to find that 

 attempts are made to give the credit of it to other people. 

 So far as I know, this discovery of the course of the blood 

 through the lungs, which is called the pulmonary circula- 

 tion, is the one step in real advance that was made 

 between the time of Galen and the time of Harvey. 

 And I would beg you to note that the word " circu- 

 lation " is improperly employed when it is applied to 

 the course of the blood through the lungs. The blood 

 from the right side of the heart, in getting to the 

 left side of the heart, only performs a half-circle it does 

 not perform a whole circle it does not return to the 

 place from whence it started ; and hence the discovery 

 of the so-called " pulmonary circulation " has nothing 

 whatever to do with that greater discovery which I shall 

 point out to you by-and-by was made by Harvey, and 

 which is alone really entitled to the name of the circulation 

 of the blood. 



If anybody wants to understand what Harvey's great 

 desert really was, I would suggest to him that he devote 

 himself to a course of reading, which I cannot promise shall 

 be very entertaining, but which, in this respect at any rate, 

 will be highly instructive namely, the works of the anato- 

 mists of the latter part of the 16th century and the beginning 

 of the 17th century. If anybody will take the trouble to do 

 that which I have thought it my business to do, he will find 

 that the doctrines respecting the action of the heart and the 



