Page:The Harveian oration 1896.djvu/16

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HARVEY AND GALEN

‘ Back to his book then ; deeper drooped his head ;

Calculus racked him.

Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead :

Tussis attacked him.

“ Now, Master, take a little rest ” — not he !

Not a whit troubled,

Back to his studies fresher than at first,

Fierce as a dragon.

‘ So, with the throttling hands of Death at strife,

Ground he at grammar;

Still, through the rattle, parts of speech were rife.

While he could stammer

He settled Hoti’s business — let it be!

Properly based Oun ;

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,

Dead from the waist down.’

To anticipate for a moment, we see that the three great English physicians of successive generations all visited Italy, and each, doubtless, owed much to that Holy Land of the northern student. But they brought back different treasures. Linacre brought a knowledge of Greek and an enthusiasm for the new learning ; Caius also much Greek and Latin, with a zeal for anatomy and training in clinical medicine; Harvey, again, a profound knowledge of anatomy, some experimental methods, and also a great enthusiasm for Aristotle, extending not only to his natural history, but to his physics and metaphysics, as we see in the Treatise on Generation *

1 The relations of Harvey to Aristotle would be an interesting study. Harvey had evidently studied the works of the contemporary Peripatetic school in Italy, especially Cesalpino, the great Aristotelian, and Caesar Cremonini (who is referred to later on), and was probably some- what influenced by them. In his great work anything speculative or metaphysical is so rigidly excluded that we can trace the influence of Aristotle’s theoretical side in one passage only, where he assents to the philosopher’s doctrine of the sovereignty of the heart, which

rules over all like a king ; and also affirms that the heart contains within itself blood, life, sensation, and motion (De Motu Cordis, cap. 17, Willis’s translation, p. 83). In his earlier MS. lectures there is much more that is distinctly Aristotelian. He speaks of the heart as ‘ caloris arx et domicilium ’ ( Prelectiones, fol. 73), and of the brain as bloodless, moist, and cold — ‘■frigidum ut contem- peraret spiritus a corde ne inflammen- tur ’ (fol. 93) — and adopts Aristotle’s dictum that man has the largest brain because he is the hottest of all animals. In the Treatise on