Proceedings of the Ohio State Academy of Science 451 



elusion that the heart was made for God himself to under- 

 stand, not man. He used the lower forms in many cases for 

 their hearts beat slower, and as a reward for diligent labor 

 on many forms he discovered the true movements of the heart. 

 He found that both ventricles beat at once and that the valves 

 between the auricles and the ventricles were closed when the 

 ventricles contract ; that the valves at the opening of the 

 arteries were pushed open at the same time and the blood 

 forced into the arteries, not only the pulmonary artery but 

 the aorta as well. It was the force of the contraction of the 

 diiTerent parts of the heart that caused the movement of the 

 heart, not the sucking of the blood from the relaxation of the 

 heart as was believed by many up to his time ; that the ar- 

 teries swelled at one point or another on account of the pres- 

 sure of the blood forced into them not that they might suck- 

 air into them. He saw how the auricles were a storehouse for 

 the blood while the ventricles contracted; how they received 

 the blood from the venae cavae on the one side and the pul- 

 monary vein on the other. He had a complete understanding 

 of the pulmonary circulation ; how the pulmonary artery car- 

 ried the blood to the lungs and the pulmonary vein brought 

 the blood from the lungs to the left auricle. The old idea of 

 Columbus and Servetus was that a part of the blood passed 

 through the septum and the rest took the longer course 

 through the lungs. If this was true for a part of the blood 

 Harvey reasoned that it was true for all of it and he demon- 

 strated it as a fact. 



He speaks of this new view as one "to which some, moved 

 either by the authority of Galen or Columbus or the reasoning 

 of others, will not give their adhesion" ; it led him to another 

 conception which "was so new, was so novel and unheard of 

 a character that in putting it forward he not only feared in- 

 jury to himself from the envy of a few, but trembled lest he 

 might have mankind at large for his enemies." This new view 

 to which he refers is the application of the same principles to 

 the greater circulation that he had already applied to the pul- 



