498 DISCOVERY OF THE BL001)’s CIRCULATION. 
Let judgment be suspended. 
It would be interesting to narrate the strange notions 
of the blood’s movements entertained by the Platonic 
and Aristotelian school, which flourished in the Attic 
metropolis ; to trace their slow yet decided progress in the 
Alexandrian school under Erasistratus ; but the time re- 
quired for the narrative of such antiquarian research is not 
at my disposal. A like reason prevents me dwelling upon the 
teaching of the elder Pliny, and of the Galenic school, which 
flourished for so many centuries under the ^Egis of its great 
founder’s name, with but immaterial innovation. 
Idle would it be to attempt to follow up the narrative in 
mediaeval darkness, and little more profitable to watch the 
twinkling of resuscitating light in the thirteenth century, 
coetaneously with the foundation of the first university, — 
that of Bologna. I shall at once pass on to the middle of 
the sixteenth century, when the great work of Yesalius 
appeared. 
By denying the existence of any communication through 
the septum, between the two sides of the adult heart, that 
great anatomist removed one great source of error ; but it is 
undeniable that many inaccuracies pervaded his notions of 
the blood’s flow, and that he had no perception of its con- 
stant motion in a circle. To Michael Servetus, famed in the 
theological world as the fortunate eluder of the flames of the 
Inquisition, the unhappy prey to the fury of the Genevan 
fanatics, appears due the merit of first suggesting the pul- 
monary circulation. Its demonstration was fully completed 
a few years afterwards, viz., in 1559, in the work ‘De Re 
Anatomica,’ of Realdus Columbus, from Cremona ; so per- 
fect, indeed, that Harvey has scarcely added anything to it. 
But some gross anatomical errors hid from the view of 
Columbus the blood’s circuitous track through the systemic 
vessels, that circle in particular, which Harvey is reputed 
to have discovered; but the passage in the work of Carlo 
Ruini, of which I append a translation, proves that not only 
was the pulmonary circle perfectly known, but the systemic, to 
a great extent, understood, in the year 1598, the year of 
Ruini’s publication, and of Harvey’s passage from the halls 
of Cambridge to devote the vigour of his youth to the study 
of medicine in the University of Padua. 
To my friend Ercolani, of Turin, is due the merit of first 
calling attention to Ruini’s extensive knowledge of the 
blood’s circulation. I cannot agree with him, however, in 
the wholesale detraction from Harvey’s merit. Truly 
less belongs to our great ancestor than the common 
