412 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



D. HARVEY'S DEDICATION OF HIS WORK ON THE MOTION OF 

 THE HEART AND THE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD (1628) 



TO HIS VERY DEAR FRIEND, DOCTOR ARGENT, THE EXCELLENT AND AC- 

 COMPLISHED PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, AND 

 TO OTHER LEARNED PHYSICIANS, HIS MOST ESTEEMED COLLEAGUES 



I have already and repeatedly presented you, my learned friends, 

 with my new views of the motion and function of the heart, in my 

 anatomical lectures ; but having now for more than nine years con- 

 firmed these views by multiplied demonstrations in your presence, 

 illustrated them by arguments, and freed them from the objections of 

 the most learned and skilful anatomists, I at length yield to the re- 

 quests, I might say entreaties, of many, and here present them for a 

 general consideration in this treatise. 



Were not the work indeed presented through you, my learned 

 friends, I should scarce hope that it could come out scatheless and 

 complete; for you have in general been the faithful witnesses of 

 almost all the instances from which I have either collected the truth 

 or confuted error. You have seen my dissections, and at my demon- 

 strations of all that I maintained to be objects of sense, you have been 

 accustomed to stand by and bear me out with your testimony. And 

 as this book alone declares the blood to course and revolve by a new 

 route, very different from the ancient and beaten pathway trodden 

 for so many ages, and illustrated by such a host of learned and distin- 

 guished men, I was greatly afraid lest I might be charged with pre- 

 sumption did I lay my work before the public at home, or send it 

 beyond seas for impression, unless I had first proposed the subject to 

 you, had confirmed its conclusions by ocular demonstrations in your 

 presence, had replied to your doubts and objections, and secured the 

 assent and support of our distinguished President. For I was most 

 intimately persuaded, that if I could make good my proposition before 

 you and our College, illustrious by its numerous body of learned in- 

 dividuals, I had less to fear from others. I even ventured to hope 

 that I should have the comfort of finding all that you had granted me 

 in your sheer love of truth, conceded by others who were philosophers 

 like yourselves. True philosophers, who are only eager for truth and 

 knowledge, never regard themselves as already so thoroughly informed, 

 but that they welcome further information from whomsoever and from 

 wheresoever it may come ; nor are they so narrow minded as to imagine 



