WILLIAM HARVEY 13 



gai:ds accuracy of reasoning. He may be considered as having made 

 the lSrs1ria4epejideiit-M^ in the subject. That he did not ac- 

 compHsh more was due to laclc oFinstruments of precision, and to 

 the fact that he had to build on the general level of the science of 

 the time. His work on embryology was published in 1651. It was 

 entitled "Exercitationes de Generatione AnimaHum." In it is an 

 account of not only the development of the chick, but of deer and 

 other mammals as well. 



All honor to him who blazes the trail. The refinements, what- 

 ever they may be, can never merit for the investigator the honor 

 which is due the ^ioneerJ As was said by Haller, one of the best \ 

 informed minds of the eighteenth century, "It is not to Caesalpinus, 1 1 

 because of some words of doubtful meaning, but to Harvey, the able / [ 

 writer, the laborious contriver of so many experiments, the staid y 

 propounder of all the arguments available in his day, that the im- I 

 mortal glory of having discovered the circulation of the blood is to J 

 be assigned." 



One of his last acts was to set aside a certain sum derived from 

 his estate for the delivery of an oration in commemoration of the 

 benefactors of the College of Physicians. This oration, the Har- 

 veian Oration, is still delivered each year by some distinguished mem- 

 ber of the medical profession. Even in his declining years his 

 thoughts were turned to the future. The Harveian Lecture is in- 

 tended to further the progress of science, especially a knowledge of 

 the body in health and disease. "Much of the nobility of the profes- 

 sion," says Osier, Harveian lecturer, 1906, "depends upon the great 

 cloud of witnesses* who pass into the silent land — ^pass and leave no 

 sign, becoming as though they had never been bom. And it was the 

 pathos of this fate not less prophetic because common to all but the 

 few, that wrung from the poet that sadly true comparison of the race ~y 

 of man to the race of the leaves." Harvey was one of the "few" to <^ 

 have achieved that immortality which places him with "The divine J 

 men of old time." 



He died June 3rd, 1657, in the eightieth year of his age. 

 Asellius and the Lymphatic Circulation. 



Corollary to the circulation of the blood is the lymphatic circula- 

 tion. The discovery of the lymphatics was almost synchronous with 

 that with which Harvey achieved an immortal name. While the 

 memory of Harvey has been fittingly honored in various ways, that 

 of Asellius or Aselli has not been sufficiently recognized. The data 

 referring to Aselli's life are extremely meagre. He was bom in 1581, 

 at Cremona, Italy, the descendant of a patrician family. He studied 

 at the University of Pavia, where he became laureate in medicine, 

 surgery and philosophy, after which he located in Milan, where he 

 taught anatomy privately and engaged in the practice of surgery. It 

 was while in Milan that he made his discovery, in 1622, of the lym- 

 phatic vessels which he called venae lactae. His discovery was rec- 

 ognized by his election, two years later, to the chair of anatomy and 

 surgery in his alma mater, a position he was destined not long to 

 hold, for he died in 1626 at the age of forty-five. His book De Lac- 

 tibus was published a year after his death. William Harvey was 



