160 PHYSIOLOGY CHAP. 



liver, and then when the intestine was empty carried the blood 

 from the liver back to the gut. These two errors of the porosity 

 of the septum, and the systolic reflux, have not a little weakened 

 the lustre of Galen's theory of the lesser circulation] it cannot, 

 however, be denied that he was the first to have any idea of it, as 

 was recognised (long before G. Oeradini once more pointed it out) 

 by competent interpreters, such as Harvey, Maurocordato, Douglas, 

 Haller and Senac, more particularly on the strength of a passage 

 in Cap. 1Q, Book VI. De usu partium. 



Who, then, was the first to rectify and complete the Galenic 

 doctrine, by denying the permeability of the cardiac septum, and 

 determining that not merely part, but the whole of the blood 

 expelled from the right ventricle returns to the left by the 

 anastomosis of the pulmonary vessels ? 



III. In the year 1553 the Spanish physician and theologian, 

 Servetus, 1 published his book Christianismi restitutio, which led, 

 at the instigation of Calvin, to his death at the stake, by which 

 he perished in Geneva in the autumn of the same year. . Only two 

 copies of this book, which was a theological treatise, are extant, 

 the greater number having been burned, some at Vienna in 

 Daupliine, with the author's effigy, and the rest in Geneva, with the 

 author himself. It contains a passage in which Servetus describes 

 the lesser circulation, denying the communication between the 

 ventricles by the septum, and affirming that the blood passes from 

 the right ventricle into the lungs, where " flavus efficitur et a vena 

 arteriosa (pulmonary artery) in arteriani venosam (pulmonary vein) 

 transfunditur." 



In 1559, some six years later, Realdus Columbus of Cremona, 

 for fifteen years prosector, and then successor to Vesalius in the 

 Chair of Anatomy at Padua, published his work De re anatomica 

 libri XV. at Venice, in which on page 177 there is a description of 

 the lesser circulation, and statement of the impermeability of the 

 septum. The author lays great stress upon this discovery, and 

 claims priority for it : " Nam sanguis per arteriosam venam ad 

 pulmonem fertur, ibique attenuatur ; deinde cum acre una per 

 arteriam venalern ad sinistrum cordis ventriculum defertur : quod 

 nemo hactenus aut animadvertit, aut script urn reliquit." 



It is undeniable, if we examine the date of the two publications, 

 that priority of discovery belongs to Servetus ; and if it could be 

 proved (as was attempted by Tollin and Preyer in Germany, and 

 by Willis in England) that Columbus had read the Christianismi 

 restitutio of Servetus, the Cremonese anatomist could not be held 

 guiltless of plagiarism. Against this assumption, however, must 



1 Mosheim's opinion that ''Servetus" or "Serveto" was the anagram of Reves 

 seems to be definitely confuted by Comenge, author of a memoir La Circulation 

 de la sanyre (1887), where it is proved that the full name of the Spanish doctor 

 and theologian Avas Michele Servet y Reves, and that lie was a native of Villanueva 

 di Sinena (Aragona), where his lather was a notary. 



