HARVEY, WILLIAm, M. D. the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood, was born at Folkstone in Kent, on the 1st of April 1578, was educated at the school of Canterbury, and sent to Cambridge in 1593, where he studied six years as gentleman commoner of Caius Col lege. His medical studies were prosecuted at the uni versity of Padua, where the most eminent of his instructors was Fabricius ab Aquapendente. This anatomist explain ed to him the structure of the valves of the veins ; a subject which he had greatly improved, and which afterwards led Harvey to views unparalleled by any in physiology for their beauty and profundity. At Padua he took the degree of M. D. and returned to England in his 24th year. At 30 he was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London ; and in about a year after succeeded Dr Wilkin son as physician to Bartholomew's hospital. On the 4th of August 1655, he delivered, by appointment of the College of Physicians, the Anatomical and Surgical Lecture of Lumley and Caldwell ; and there is reason to believe, that on this occasion he gave a modest intimation of his great discoveries, as he left a manuscript, de Anatomia Universa, dated about this time, which contains the outlines of his doctrines. Twelve years elapsed before he published them to the world. His fame, in the mean time, gained ground, and the estimation in which he was held by his professional brethren gave it solidity, as well as brilliancy.
It was in 1628 that he published his Exercitatio Anato mica de Gordis et Sanguinis motu, at Frankfort, a centre from which it was most readily diffused through Europe, by means of the great book fairs which were annually held in that city. In no point of view can this work be too high ly praised as a specimen of the most ingenious and solid speculation, and of striking experimental inquiries, arrang ed in luminous order, and accompanied with apposite illus trations. It still continues unrivalled for importance as an original publication. An account of the. great doctrines which it establishes is given in our article ANATOMY (His tory of,) to which we beg leave to refer.
But it as the merit of Harvey was, and respecta bly as t was supported by the cordial admiration of his col leagues, his opinions were represented by a herd of oppo nents as precipitate innovations ; and the inference drawn by the confiding multitude was, that the author of them could not be a safe medical practitioner. Ills practice as a
physician actually fell off, Furnishing a striking proof of the precarious and humbling conditions of a medical reputation. The bigotted abettors of old established systems, after in juring his name by whispers and innuendoes, attacked him at last by. controversial writings, and thus put it in his power to vindicate the trial's which he had discovered, and refute the Galenian errors which had maintained their ground for ages.
Dr Primrose of Oxford was his first opponent. He main tained that the blood was carried to the different parts of the body, not by the impulse of the heart, but by the power which all the living organs have to attract the substances fitted for their nourishment. Four years after this, he was attacked by /Emylius Parisanus, a physician of Venice, with great pomp of words, in a barbarous and obscure style of eloquence, in which he supported a strange medley of ancient opinions and peculiar original dogmata. Dr Har vey was saved the irksome task of replying to a tortuous and confused tissue of unmeaning words, by the zeal of his liberal admirer and genuine friend Sir George Ent, a phy sician of the highest reputation, who, in an Apology for the Circulation of the Blood, replete with learned and acute ar gument, and enlivened with eloquence and Wit, completely exposed the futilities of that author.
In a few years after this he met with a more able and liberal minded opponent in Riolan of Paris, who had enter tained a fanciful doctrine of his own upon the motion of the blood, which could not stand iiHarvey's views were estab lished. In answer to Riolan, Harvey wrote two treatises called Exercitationes. Every modern anatomist who looks back to these disputes, smiles not only at the obstinacy with which the true doctrine of the circulation was resisted, but at the gross ignorance betrayed by its opponents, in particu lars of anatomical structure which are now familiar to the youngest tiro in the science. Riolan soberly maintained, that in the adult subject the left auricle of the heart was a solid mass, possessing no cavity capable of containing blood.