Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/464

46+0 particularly sorry to have to say that the first person to write formally against Harvey was a Scotsman, a Dr. Primrose. He had been a pupil of Riolanus; he published his feeble tract in 1630. Harvey never replied to Primrose, probably because his book was sheer Galenism and because he had only just been admitted into the College of Physicians, Harvey being one of his examiners. This Dr. James Primrose was of the same family that gave rise to that of the Earls of Rosebery. A longer, but still weaker, protest was made in 1635 by one Parisanus, of Venice; Harvey did not reply to this, either; there was nothing new in it.

Caspar Hoffman of Altdorf was, in point of time, the next objector, as we gather from Harvey's letter to him dated May, 1636. Hoffman's difficulty is one very typical of the prescientific spirit, the spirit of the middle ages; it is this: Harvey has made out nature to be a clumsy and inefficient artificer in causing the blood to return again and again to the heart to be reconcocted. This objection we should now call teleological; Harvey's reply virtually is, that teleological difficulties must not prevent our drawing conclusions from facts observable in the living animal. Blood constantly pours through the heart in one direction only; if we can not explain this, that must not prevent our admitting that it does so. Harvey virtually says: you must not weight your physiology with a teological load.

The difficulty of Professor Vesling of Padua was neither frivolous nor antiquated, it was a real one: how is it possible for the blood in arteries and veins to be the same blood when it is scarlet in the one and purple in the other? This would be a difficulty to us still, if we did not know the physico-chemical reasons for the change of color. Naturally, Harvey's answer is not any explanation of the change of color; he can only emphasize the arguments of the "De Motu," which are so full and so convincing to those capable of appreciating the experimental method.

It can not be said that Harvey's life was destitute of incident, for his appointment as physician to Charles brought him into contact with many interesting and distinguished people, and led him into many stirring scenes. He accompanied Charles at least on one visit to Scotland, namely, that for his coronation in 1633. We know this, because there exists in the records of St. Bartholomew's Hospital a request for Harvey to absent himself, and that a substitute be allowed to act for him. Harvey was a very great deal with the king and accompanied His Majesty on his hunting expeditions, when he had opportunities of examining the bodies of deer, observations he turned to good account in his work on development ("De generatione").

It can not but be interesting to some of us to know that William Harvey was in Edinburgh. As personal attendant on the king, he