248 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 668, 



reflections on Bartholine, for his insinuations that Pauli, of Venice, was ac- 

 quainted with the circulation of the blood before Harvey * published his account 

 of it ; whereas it is certain that whatever knowledge Pauli (between whom and 

 Harvey there was a long established friendship) might have had of this subject, 

 it must have been derived through the medium of the Venetian envoy, then 

 in England. He afterwards proceeds to observe, that although he had been 

 diligently engaged for several years past in mixing various liquors with the blood 

 of living animals, and had infused into the circulating mass not only a variety 

 of alimentary drinks (potulenta) to the quantity of 1 lbs. but had likewise made 

 similar trials with emetics, cathartics, diuretics, cardiacs, and opiates, as well 

 as the transfusion of blood itself; yet he confesses he still entertains many 

 doubts as to the utility (and in some instances the safety) of such experiments, 

 in a medical point of view. At the same time he is ready to allow that the in- 

 fusing of difi^erent liquors into the veins of animals may answer some anatomical 

 purposes, and tend to throw light upon the nature and composition of the blood. 

 He is further of opinion, that in sudden and profuse haemorrhages the transfu- 

 sion of blood may possibly have the eff^ect of recruiting the exhausted frame in 

 a speedy and powerful manner; in support of which opinion, he appeals to the 

 experiment witnessed by Mr. Oldenburg and himself, of an animal which was 

 bled until it was seized with convulsions, and apparently in a dying state, being 

 restored to its former vigour in the space of seven minutes, by transfusing into it 

 the blood of another animal of a different species. Nevertheless he doubts 

 much of the applicability of transfusion of blood to the cure of diseases in ge- 

 neral, and particularly of the possibility of conferring, by its means, upon per- 

 sons far advanced in years, the health and vigour of youth. In regard to the 

 infusing of nutrimental or medicated liquors into the veins, he justly suspects 

 that no such liquors can be really beneficial, unless they previously undergo 

 those changes in the first concoctions which render them fit for being mixed 

 with the circulating mass. Much of what follows relates to the priority of the 

 discovery (claimed by the French and other foreigners) of the transfusion of 

 blood, and the injecting of medicated liquors into the veins. Dr. Clarck shows 

 (as Mr. Oldenburg had done before) that both these experiments originated 

 with the English; Dr. Lower having been the first who performed transfusion 

 on brutes, and the French anatomist Dr. Denis the first who tried it upon man. 

 The account of Dr. Lower's experiment was published in the Phil. Trans, for 

 December 1666; but nothing was heard of Dr. Denis's operation until March 



* An opportunity will hereafter occur of giving some account of this great physician's discoveries 

 and writings. 



