450 THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 



communicate how it was that the blood of the arteries 

 passed into the veins. One is grieved to think that the grand 

 old man should have gone down to his tomb without the vast 

 satisfaction it would have given to him to see what the Italian 

 naturalist Malpighi showed only seven years later, in 1664, 

 when he demonstrated, in a living frog, the actual passage 

 of the blood from the ultimate ramifications of the arteries 

 into the veins. But that absolute ocular demonstration 

 of the truth of the views he had maintained throughout his 

 life it was not granted to Harvey to see. What he did 

 experience was this : that on the publication of his doctrines, 

 they were met with the greatest possible opposition ; and 

 I have no doubt savage things were uttered in those old 

 controversies, and that a great many people said that these 

 new-fangled doctrines, reducing living processes to mere 

 mechanism, would sap the foundations of religion and 

 morality. I do not know for certain that they did, but they 

 said things very like it. The first point was to show that 

 Harvey's views were absolutely untrue ; and not being able 

 to succeed in that, opponents said they were not new ; and 

 not being able to succeed in that, that they didn't matter. 

 That is the usual course with all new discoveries. But 

 Harvey troubled himself very little about these things. 

 He remained perfectly quiet ; for although reputed a hot- 

 tempered man, he never would have anything to do with 

 controversy if he could help it ; and he only replied to one 

 of his antagonists after twenty years' interval, and then 

 in the most charming spirit of candour and moderation. 

 But he had the great satisfaction of living to see his doctrine 

 accepted upon all sides. At the time of his death, there 

 was not an anatomical school in Europe in which 

 the doctrine of the circulation of the blood was not 

 taught in the way in which Harvey had laid it down. 

 In that respect he had a happiness which is granted to 

 very few men. 



I have said that the other great investigation of Harvey 

 is not one which can be dealt with to a general audience. 

 It is very complex, and therefore I must ask you to take 

 my word for it that, although not so fortunate an investiga- 

 tion, not so entirely accordant with later results as the 

 doctrine of the circulation ; yet that still, this little treatise 

 of Harvey's has in many directions exerted an influence 

 hardly less remarkable than that exerted by the Essay 

 upon the Circulation of the Blood. 





