What he had once esteemed of highest price.’
“So will it, perchance, be found with reference to the heart at this time; or others, at least, starting from hence, the way pointed out to them, advancing under the guidance of a happier genius, may make occasion to proceed more fortunately, and to inquire more accurately.”
In the second chapter, after a vivid description of the behaviour of the heart, he thus declares its muscular nature. “The motion of the heart consists in a certain universal tension—both contraction in the line of its fibres, and constriction in every sense. It becomes erect, hard, and of diminished size during its action; the motion is plainly of the same nature as that of the muscles when they contract in the line of their sinews and fibres; for the muscles, when in action, acquire vigour and tenseness, and from soft become hard, prominent, and thickened: in the same manner the heart.”...
“These things, therefore, happen together or at the same instant: the tension of the heart, the pulse of its apex, which is felt externally by its striking against the chest, the thickening of its parietes, and the forcible expulsion of the blood it contains by the constriction of its ventricles.”
In further chapters he establishes separately, and in a masterly manner, the facts that the pulse in the arteries depends on the contraction of the ventricles; that when the left ventricle ceases to contract, the pulse in the arteries also ceases; that the two auricles contract together, and also the two ventricles together, but the ventricles following the auricles in a certain rhythm; that the heart accomplishes a transfusion of the blood from the veins to the arteries; and that the blood sent into the lungs from the right ventricle passes through the porous structure of the lungs and back to the left ventricle.
In his eighth chapter, Harvey feels himself to be bringing forward considerations of so novel a character, that “I tremble,” he says, “lest I have mankind at large for my enemies, so much doth wont and custom, that become as another nature, and doctrine once sown and that hath struck deep root, and respect for antiquity influence all men: still the die is cast, and my trust is in my love of truth, and the candour that inheres in cultivated minds.” He found it impossible to account for the constant influx of blood into the arteries, and the return of blood to the heart, unless there was “a motion, as it were, in a circle.” And he shows by calculations of the quantity passing through the heart in an hour, that it is much more than the whole body contains, and that there is no way except by communications taking place from arteries to veins in every part of the body. Finally, he clearly shows how the valves in the veins promote the return of blood to the heart.
Throughout the whole of this treatise considerations from comparative anatomy, from the phenomena of human diseases, and from natural philosophy, are thickly interspersed, and imagery of the most suggestive character is called into requisition; the whole forming a treatise that every scientific man might well read, and that no doctor should consider himself fully educated without having attentively perused. In a subsequent letter to John Riolan the younger, Professor of Anatomy in the University of Paris, Harvey lays down—in opposition to those who repudiate the circulation because they cannot see the efficient nor final cause of it, and who exclaim, Cui bono?—the fundamental scientific axiom, “Our first duty is to inquire whether the thing be or not, before asking wherefore it is.” Again, “He who truly desires to be informed of the question in hand, and whether the facts alleged be sensible, visible, or not, must be held bound, either to look for himself, or to take on trust the conclusions to which they have come who have looked; and indeed there is no higher method of attaining to assurance and certainty.”
Everything that Harvey wrote shows him to have been pre-eminently an example of the scientific mind, that which submits everything to the test of experiment and observation. Anatomy he professed to learn and teach, not from books, but from dissections, not from the positions of philosophers, but from the fabric of Nature. In the introduction to his Treatise on Generation he praises the “more excellent way” of those “who, following the traces of nature with their own eyes, pursued her through devious but most assured ways till they reached her in the citadel of truth. And truly in such pursuits,” he goes on, “it is sweet not merely to toil, but even to grow weary, when the pains of discovering are amply compensated by the pleasures of discovery. Eager for novelty, we are wont to travel far into unknown countries, that with our own eyes we may witness what we have heard reported as having been seen by others, where, however, we for the most part find that the presence lessens the repute. It were disgraceful, therefore, with this most spacious and admirable realm of nature before us, and where the reward ever exceeds the promise, did we take the reports of others upon trust, and go on coining crude problems out of these, and on them hanging knotty and captious and petty disputations. Nature is herself to be addressed; the paths she shows us are to be boldly trodden; for thus, and whilst we consult our proper senses, from inferior advancing to superior levels, shall we penetrate at length into the heart of her mystery.”
True and scientific as the Treatise on the Heart and the Circulation was, or rather because it was so true and scientific, its publication gave a decided and severe check to Harvey’s professional prosperity. It was believed by the vulgar, says Aubrey, that he was crack-brained. Writing many years after the publication, Aubrey says that though he was allowed to be an excellent anatomist, nobody admired his therapeutic methods. It was said by practitioners that they could not tell by his prescriptions what he aimed at. Yet he continued well in favour with the court, and with numerous persons of distinction. Having become Physician Extraordinary to James I. in 1618 or earlier, he was in 1623 promised the reversion of the office of Physician in Ordinary when a vacancy should occur. But his accession to this post only took place in 1630 under Charles I.[7]
Harvey became Treasurer of the College of Physicians in 1628, but resigned this office and also procured the appointment of a deputy at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1630, when he was commanded by the King to attend the young Duke of Lennox in his travels on the Continent. Having returned from this expedition, in 1632 he was sworn in Physician in Ordinary for his Majesty’s household, and in 1639 we find a letter in the Lord Steward’s office, giving orders for settling a diet of three dishes of meat a meal with all incidents thereunto belonging upon Dr. Harvey. But later on, in 1640, the King when at York makes another arrangement, devoting £200 a year to Dr. Harvey, the three dishes of meat probably not having been readily forthcoming just then. In 1632-3 a deputy had again to be appointed at St. Bartholomew’s; in 1636 he was required to accompany the Earl of Arundel on his embassy to the Emperor of Germany. This gave him an opportunity of personally explaining the circulation to various eminent physicians in the principal German cities. On one of these occasions, at Nuremberg, we find it recorded that Harvey gave a public demonstration of the circulation, which satisfied all except Caspar Hofmann.[8] Returning to England, Harvey accompanied Charles I. in his expeditions, such as that to Scotland in 1639; and we may remark that, being in such close proximity to the royal person, he contrived very skilfully not to become involved in court intrigues, his best protection being his devotion to his medical and physiological investigations.[9] Even when war had broken out, Harvey became in no way obnoxious to the Parliament, for he tells us himself that he attended the King not only with the consent but by the desire of Parliament. In this way Harvey was present on the very field at the battle of Edgehill.