J^otes to Introductory Lecture, Ivii 



the circulation, that there seems to have been nothing more 

 required for making the discovery than laying aside gross 

 prejudices, and considering fairly some obvious truths."^ 

 Yet anatomists continued until the time of Harvey to assert 

 that the liver was the source of blood, and that from it, the 

 vital fluid was distributed to other parts of the body. 



For an account of the opposition made to Dr. Harvey by 

 the envious part of his contemporaries, and of the injurious 

 effects which this sublime discovery had upon tlie temporal 

 prosperity of its author, the reader is referred to Dr. Rush's 

 ToUime of Introductory Lectures, a work which ought to be 

 in the possession of every gentleman, and of every professor 

 of divinity, medicine or law. — The life of Harvey may be 

 found in Hutchinson's Biographia Medica. 



JVofc 32. 

 See Cruikshank's anatomy of the absorbent vessels, p. 30. 

 London, 1790. The history of the absorbents is curious and 

 extremely interesting. — Erasistratus the grand son of Aris- 

 totle had certainly discovered these vessels in the intestines 

 of a kid, but he thought they were arteries and agreeably to 

 the opinion of the Alexandrian school of which he was a 

 pupil, he supposed they contained air like other vessels of 

 tlie same nature. These vessels are also hinted at by Hip- 

 pocrates, and Galen, but their real use was ascertained by 

 Azeilius of Cremona in 1622, who in dissecting first a dog, 

 and afterwards other quadrupeds, observed vessels contain- 

 ing a Diilky fluid to commence from the intestines; but though 

 he traced them to a cluster of glands which he called pan- 

 creas, yet because he also found a few similar vessels on the 

 liver he supposed that viseus to be their final place of termi- 

 nation. The result of the labour of Azeilius was published 

 with coloured plates in 1627, after the death of the author, 

 and the year before Harvey's work on the circulation came 



* Introductory Lecture, p. 'H, 



