PATHOLOGY. 
privilege of exercifing his profeflion, was obliged to ftudy 
the Latin language, logic, and other elementary fciences. 
By this favourable regulation, the College of Surgeons 
was at once raifed to the rank of a learned fchool, and 
obtained at length the right of creating Mailers, Bache¬ 
lors, Licentiates, and Doctors, of Surgery. In confequence 
of this arrangement, Henry II. granted to the members 
of the Chirurgical College of St. Louis, all the preroga¬ 
tives attached to a faculty ; and the patent ifl'ued on that 
occafion was regiftered in the parliamentary laws, under 
the name of Lettres d'Ociroi. 
In the j’ear 1551, the medical faculty, under the 
deanery of John du Hamel, re-commenced the difpute 
againll the furgeons. Although Rudolph le Fort, dean 
of the College of St. Louis, zealoufly defended the fur¬ 
geons, yet du Hamel found the means of procuring a re¬ 
peal of the decree enadled in 15155 and, contrary to the 
fpirit of that law, the furgeons were again obliged to fub- 
mit to an examination before the medical faculty. Under 
Henry III. however, the furgeons once more obtained a 
confirmation of their privileges, in 1577, by virtue of 
which they were entitled to confer academical dignities ; 
and, notwithftanding the newoppoiition of the faculty in 
1579, the furgeons, as well as the univerfity of Paris, were in 
the fame year favoured with an indult of pope Gregory 
XIII. while de Thou vindicated the caufe of the former, in 
a fpirited and fuccefsful manner, againft the opprelfions of 
the faculty. The colleges fubfequently eitablilhed by fur¬ 
geons acquired fuch a degree of authority, that, in the 
year 1596, they were empowered to give polltive orders to 
the barbers, in difficult chirurgical cafes always to con- 
fult a fworn furgeon, and upon no account to undertake 
the treatment of any other but the flighted:external inju¬ 
ries. Thefe privileges and prerogatives of the furgeons 
of Paris were further confirmed by Henry IV. in 1602, 
and by Louis XIII. in 1614. 
About this time was framed the following oath, which 
to this day is taken by every phyfician who takes a degree 
at the univerfity of Montpelier. “ I, ■ - , be¬ 
fore the image of Hippocrates, in prefence of the profef- 
fors of this fchool, and of my dear fellow-coilegians, do 
fwear, in the name of the Supreme Being, to be faithful to 
the laws of honour and probity in the exercife of medicine. 
I will give my care gratuitoufiy to the indigent, and will 
not exa6t a falary beyond my juft demands. Admitted 
into the interior of families, my eyes fhall not fee what 
they ought not to fee, nor fhall my tongue betray any 
fecrets confided to me 5 nor fhall my profeflion be made 
available to corrupt morals, or to favour guilt. Re- 
fpeFtful and grateful to my mailers, I will endeavour to 
return to their children the inltrmSlion which I have 
gathered from the fathers. May men grant me their 
efteem in proportion as I am faithful to this oath ; and 
may I be difgraced among my colleagues when I fwerve 
from it.” 
III. From the Seventeenth Century to the present 
Time. 
The moll brilliant difcovery of the 17th century was 
that of the circulation of the blood, by our countryman 
Harvey, who was born in the year 1578. He firft opened 
the difcovery in 1616, in his leisures in the Latin lan¬ 
guage, which are preferved in MS. in the Britiffi Mufeum ; 
but his work, containing the details, was not publifhed 
till the year 1628, when his “ Exercitatio anatomica de 
Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus” appeared at 
Frankfort: and this is the only edition which bears the 
ftamp of Harvey’s own authority. This treatife, which 
Haller has moll appropriately flyled aurcum opufcuhm, is 
conftrucled entirely upon the refult of experiment, and 
contains an excellent arrangement of the fubjefit. The 
author was now created phyfician to king Charles I. and 
demonflrated the circulation before him in a living 
animal. 
The vail importance of this difcovery to the whole 
fcience of phyfiology; the influence which it neceftarily 
exerted on the doftrines of pathology ;■ and the general 
revolution which arofe from this fource throughout the 
whole circle of medical knowledge; will juftify us in 
giving a flight hillorical fxetch of the fubjecl, and in 
pointing out the opinions held by thofe anatomifts and 
phyiiologifts who preceded- our immortal countryman 
Harvey. To him, indeed, the glory of this greateft of all 
phyfiological difcoveries has been affigned by the almoft 
unanimous concurrence of his fucceffors. Some, however, 
have endeavoured to deprive him of his well-earned fame, 
by afcribing a knowledge of the circulation to various 
preceding writers. Mr. Dutens, in the fecond volume of 
his “ Recherches fur l’Origine des Decouvertes attributes 
aux Modernes,” has brought forward paflages from 
Hippocrates, Plato, Ariftotle, Julius Pollux, Apuleius, 
and others, in order to prove that they knew the courfe 
of the blood. After the pofitive dogmatical alfertions 
with which the author fets out, we are furprifed by the 
weaknefs and inadequacy of his proofs, and can only ac¬ 
count for the inconfiftency by fuppofing him to have been 
utterly ignorant of the fubjedl. He quotes a few inf¬ 
lated paflages which cannot, by the moll favourable inter¬ 
pretation, beconftrued into the femblance of a proof, that 
the writers in queftion knew the circulation of the blood. 
But the only fair and unexceptionable method of deter¬ 
mining whether any individual was acquainted with a 
particular fa 61 , is to confider all that he has faid on the 
iubjedl, and to draw our inferences from the refult of this 
general examination. Such an inquiry will prove moll 
clearly, that a knowledge of the circulation, fuch as we 
pofiefs at prefent, can be afcribed to no one before 
Harvey; although a part of the fubje£t,viz. the paflage of 
the blood through the lungs, had been defcribed by feve- 
ral perfons before the time of that illuftrious character. 
That the blood moves, has been univerfally known and 
admitted, fince the fcience of medicine has aflfumed a dif- 
tinfl form : how much of its courfe, and of the laws that 
regulate its motion, has been afcertained at any given pe¬ 
riod, is another queftion. The circulation is fo generally 
known in the prefent day, and the proofs on which it refts 
are fo obvious and familiar to every tyro in the profeflion, 
that we feel furprifed how they Ihould fo long have ef- 
caped the obfervation of the numerous ingenious and 
learned characters, whofe names adorn the annals of ana¬ 
tomy. We muft remember that the courfe of the blood, 
taken altogether, forms a fubjeft of confiderable intricacy; 
that the purfuit of anatomy was attended in the early 
periods of the fcience with confiderable difficulty and 
danger; and that the unlimited fway which the authority 
of Galen held over the minds of men for fome centuries, 
precluded all attempts at further inveftigation. 
Hippocrates Hates that the blood meets with obftacles 
in its courfe, which retard or entirely arreft its progrefs; 
that it goes from the internal parts towards the furface; 
and vice-verfd, that the blood muft flow forwards from 
the heart, fince the valves hinder its return, and that the 
arteries are diftended when their blood is flopped. In 
fpeaking of the blood’s motion, he compares it to the 
courfe of rivers, to the ebbing and flowing of the fea, and 
even to the revolutions of the planets. He affigns the 
origin of the arteries to the heart, and that of the veins 
to the liver; and fuppofes that there are two oppofite mo¬ 
tions in the temporal arteries, by which their pulfations 
are produced. He fpeaks of four fluids in the body, the 
blood, water, mucus, and bile, which come from the 
heart, head, fpleen, and liver; all thofe parts are, how¬ 
ever, fuppiied from one principal fource, the ftomach. 
Can we difcover any traces of a knowledge of the circu¬ 
lation in this confulion of ideas; and may we not be 
jullly furprifed, to find that enlightened men Ihould be 
fo led away by their prejudices, as to allow to Hippocrates 
the knowledge of a difcovery, which no one had per¬ 
ceived in his writings for nearly three thoufand years ? 
The obfervations of the founder of medicine had led 
aftray 
x 
