294 Britain's Heritage of Science 



CHAPTER XI 



PHYSIOLOGY 



HARVEY (1578-1657), who, like Newton, worked in one 

 of the two sciences which, in Stewart times, were, to 

 some extent, ahead of all the others, was undoubtedly the 

 second man of outstanding genius in science in the seventeenth 

 century. Harvey, " the little choleric man " as Aubrey 

 calls him, was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and 

 at Padua, and was in his thirty-eighth year when, in his 

 lectures on anatomy, he expounded his new doctrine of 

 the circulation of the blood to the College of Physicians, 

 although his " Exercitatio " on this subject did not appear 

 till 1628. His notes for the lectures are now in the British 

 Museum. He was physician to Charles I., and it is on record 

 how, during the battle of Edgehill, he looked after the 

 young princes as he sat reading a book under a hedge a little 

 removed from the fight. 



In the chain of evidence of his convincing demonstration 

 of the circulation of the blood one link, only to be supplied 

 by the invention of the compound microscope, was missing. 

 This, the discovery of the capillaries, was due to Malpighi, 

 who was amongst the earliest anatomists to apply the com- 

 pound microscope to animal tissues. Still, as Dryden has it 



" The circling streams once thought but pools of blood 

 (Whether life's fuel or the body's food), 

 From dark oblivion Harvey's name shall save." * 



Harvey was happy in two respects as regards his dis- 

 covery. It was, in the main, and especially in England, 

 recognized as proven in his own lifetime, and, again, no 

 one of credit claimed or asserted the claim of others to 

 priority. In research, all enquirers stand on steps others 

 have built up; but in this, the most important of single 

 contributions to physiology, the credit is Harvey's and 



1 Epistle to Dr. Charleton. 



