Page:The Harveian oration, 1875 (IA b22314611).pdf/34

 and before the colour had left the face, in the bodies of men who had been hanged; and he had shown to many witnesses the right auricle and lungs distended with blood, and the auricle in particular as large as a maids fist, and so full that it looked as if it would burst.

Referring to this vivisection of a snake in his second dissertation addressed to Riolan, Harvey describes the vivisection of a fallow deer, at which many of the nobility and His Most Serene Majesty the King, his master, were present. The internal jugular vein was exposed and divided; when only a few drops of blood were observed to escape from the lower orifice, while “a round torrent of blood” gushed forth from the upper orifice, coming down from the head.

And here, as lending an incidental interest to the life of Harvey, I may remind you of the many occasions on which our great anatomist and physiologist bears testimony to the personal interest the King, Queen, and Court took in his inquiries. Harvey, as is well known, was allowed to make what use he pleased of the Royal herds of deer, in his studies both of the Circulation and Generation; and he tells us how he often showed the King the