VOL. XVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 683 



of Galen ; that if we descend to particulars, the anatomy of the brain was not 

 known to any tolerable degree before Malpighius and Willis : that the ancients 

 knew little of the texture of the eye, in comparison of what may be found in 

 the writings of Dr. Briggs ; that the glands which supply it with moisture are 

 by nobody so well described as by Monsieur Nuck ; that the ear, with its inner 

 cavities, was little known before Monsieur Du Vemey ; that the knowledge of 

 the texture of the tongue is owing to Malpighius ; of the glands of the mouth, 

 jaws, and neck, to Wharton, Steno, and Nuck ; and of the lungs to Malpi- 

 ghius ; that the primary use of the lungs was wholly unknown to the ancients, 

 who had no notion of the circulation of the blood ; since all that can be col- 

 lected from the writings of Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle, is, that the blood 

 had a constant recurrent motion through the body, which they could not dis- 

 tinctly describe ; that this motion through the veins to the right ventricle of 

 the heart, thence through the lungs into the left, and so through the arteries 

 over the whole body till it meets again with the veins, first called by Caesalpinus 

 the circulation of the blood, was first discovered by Servetus, than pursued 

 somewhat further by Columbus and Caesalpinus, and at last made perfectly intel- 

 ligible by Dr. Harvey, whose discoveries were lately made complete by Mons. 

 Leuwenhoeck : that the texture of the heart was first discovered by Dr. Lower, 

 of the coats of the stomach by Dr. Willis, of the fibres of the intestines by 

 Dr. Cole, of the chyliferous vessels by Asellius and Pecquet, of the lacteal 

 vessels in women by Mons. Nuck, and of the liver by Malpighius ; that the 

 ductus pancreaticus was first discovered by Wirsungus, and the spleen and the 

 reins found to be glandulous bodies by Malpighius ; that the lympha and its ducts 

 were never thought of till they were discovered by Bartholin, Rudbeck, and 

 JollifFe; that Dr. Havers found out the mucilage'in the joints, with the glands 

 which secrete it ; and lastly, that the anatomy of brutes has been as carefully 

 examined as that of men, of which he gives several instances. (Chap. 17, 18, IQ.) 

 In treating of philosophy, he begins with natural history, and with that of 

 elementary bodies and minerals as the simplest. He observes that the ancients 

 knew little of the nature of air, that though Aristotle believed it to gravitate, 

 yet his disciples so little understood him, that they asserted the quite contrary ; 

 that the doctrine of its spring is owing to our truly noble countryman Mr. 

 Boyle, whose histories of the most conspicuous qualities of terrestrial bodies 

 have much enlarged that part of natural history. In his account of minerals he 

 instances in the loadstone, whose noblest properties were anciently unknown : 

 and he enlarges upon their use, with the increase of wealth and knowledge, 

 which thereby have accrued to these European nations, in these two last ages. 

 Chap. 20.) 



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