Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/263

 WILLIAM HARVEY 175 In that year the " Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis " was published at Frankfort. This masterly treatise begins with a short outline and refutation of the opinions of former anatomists on the movement of the animal fluids and the function of the heart ; the author discriminating with care, and anxiously acknowledging the glimpses of the truth to be met with in their writ- ings ; as if he had not only kept in mind the justice due to previous discoveries, and the prudence of softening the novelty and veiling the extent of his own, but had foreseen the preposterous imputation of plagiarism, which, with other incon- sistent charges, was afterward brought forward against him. This short sketch is followed by a plain exposition of the anatomy of the circulation, and a detail of the results of numerous experiments ; and the new theory is finally main- tained in a strain of close and powerful reasoning, and followed into some of its most important consequences. The whole argument is conducted in simple and unpretending language, with great perspicuity, and scrupulous attention to logi- cal form. The doctrine announced by Harvey may be briefly stated thus : The blood circulates through the body, thereby sustaining life. The heart is simply the pump which drives the blood through the arteries, from whence it returns im- pure, and is then forced through the lungs and repurified. The pulmonary circulation had been surmised by Galen, and maintained by his successors ; but no proof even of this insulated portion of the truth, more than amounted to strong probability, had been given till the time of Harvey, and no plausible claim to the discovery, still less to the demonstration, of the general circulation has ever been set up in opposition to his. Indeed, its truth was quite inconsistent with the ideas everywhere entertained in the schools on the functions of the heart and other viscera, and was destructive of many favorite theories. The new doctrine, therefore, as may well be supposed, was received by most of the anatomists of the period with distrust, and by all with surprise. Some of them undertook to refute it, but their objections turned principally on the silence of Galen, or consisted of the most frivolous cavils ; the controversy, too, assumed the form of personal abuse even more speedily than is usually the case when authority is at issue with reason. To such opposition Harvey for some time did not think it necessary to reply ; but some of his friends in Eng- land, and of the adherents to his doctrine on the Continent, warmly took up his defence. At length he was induced to take a personal share in the dispute in answer to Riolanus, a Parisian anatomist of some celebrity, whose objections were distinguished by some show of philosophy, and unusual abstinence from abuse. The answer was conciliatory and complete, but ineffectual to produce conviction ; and in reply to Harvey's appeal to direct experiment, his opponent urged nothing but conjecture and assertion. Harvey once more rejoined at a considerable length ; taking occasion to give a spirited rebuke to the unworthy reception he had met with, in which it seems that Riolanus had now permitted himself to join ; adducing several new and conclusive experiments in support of his theory ; and entering at large upon its value in simplifying physiology and