Parkinson. 10. Johnson, in 1636, published an edition of Gerard’s Herbal. But the Theatrum Botanicum of Parkinson, in 1640, is a work, says Pulteney, of much more originality than Gerard’s and it contains abundantly more matter. We find in it near 3,800 plants; but many descriptions recur more than once. The arrangement is in seventeen classes, partly according to the known or supposed qualities of the plant, and partly according to their external character.[646] “This heterogeneous classification, which seems to be founded on that of Dodoens, shows the small advances that had been made towards any truly scientific distribution; on the contrary, Gerard, Johnson, and Parkinson, had rather gone back, by not sufficiently pursuing the example of Lobel.”
[646] P. 146.
ON ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
Claims of early Writers to the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood—Harvey—Lacteal Vessels discovered by Asellius—Medicine.
Valves of the veins discovered. 11. The first important discovery that was made public in this century was that of the valves of the veins; which is justly ascribed to Fabricius de Aquapendente, a professor at Padua; because, though some of these valves are described even by Berenger, and further observations were made on the subject by Sylvius, Vesalius, and other anatomists, yet Fallopius himself had in this instance thrown back the science by denying their existence, and no one before Fabricius had generalised the discovery. This he did in his public lectures as early as 1524; but his tract De Venarum Ostiolis appeared in 1603. This discovery, as well as that of Harvey, has been attributed to Father Paul Sarpi, whose immense reputation in the north of Italy accredited every tale favourable to his glory. But there seems to be no sort of ground for either supposition.
Theory of the blood’s circulation. 12. The discovery of a general circulation in the blood has done such honour to Harvey’s name, and has been claimed for so many others, that it deserves more consideration than we can usually give to anatomical science. According to Galen, and the general theory of anatomists formed by his writings, the arterial blood flows from the heart to the extremities, and returns again by the same channels, the venous blood being propelled, in like manner, to and from the liver. The discovery attributed to Harvey was, that the arteries communicate with the veins, and that all the blood returns to the heart by the latter vessels. Besides this general or systemic circulation, there is one called the pulmonary, in which the blood is carried by certain arteries through the lungs, and returned again by corresponding veins, preparatory to its being sent into the general sanguineous system; so that its course is through a double series of ramified vessels, each beginning and terminating at the heart, but not at the same side of the heart; the left side, which from a cavity called its ventricle throws out the arterial blood by the aorta, and by another called its auricle receives that which has passed through the lungs by the pulmonary vein, being separated by a solid septum from the right side, which, by means of similar cavities, receives the blood of all the veins, excepting those of the lungs, and throws it out into the pulmonary artery. It is thus evident, that the word pulmonary circulation is not strictly proper, there being only one for the whole body.
Sometimes ascribed to Servetus. 13. The famous work of Servetus, Christianismi Restitutio, has excited the attention of the literary part of the world, only by the unhappy fate it brought upon the author, and its extreme scarcity, but by a remarkable passage wherein he has been supposed to describe the circulation of the blood. That Servetus had a just idea of the pulmonary circulation and the aeration of the blood in the lungs, is manifest by this passage, and is denied by no one; but it has been the opinion of anatomists that he did not apprehend the return of the mass of the blood through the veins to the right auricle of the heart.[647]
[647] In the first volume of this work, p. 643, I have observed that Levasseur had come much nearer to the theory of a general circulation than Servetus. But the passage in Levasseur, which I knew only from the quotation in Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie, i., 373, does not, on consulting the book itself, bear out the inference which Portal seems to deduce; and he has, not quite rightly, omitted all expressions which he thought erroneous. Thus Levasseur precedes the first sentence of Portal’s quotation by the following: Intus (in corde) sunt sinus seu ventriculi duo tantum, septo quodam medio discreti, per cujus foramina sanguis et spiritus communicatur. In utroque duo vasa habentur. For this he quotes Galen; and the perforation of the septum of the heart is known to be one of Galen’s errors. Upon the whole, there seems no ground for believing that Levasseur was acquainted with the general circulation; and though his language may at first lead us to believe that he speaks of that through the lungs, even this is not distinctly made out. Sprengel, in his History of Medicine, does not mention the name of Levasseur (or Vassæus, as he was called in Latin) among those who anticipated, in any degree, the discovery of circulation. The book quoted by Portal is Vassæus in Anatomen Corporis Humani Tabulæ Quatuor, several times printed between 1540 and 1560.
Andrès (Origine e Progressio d’Ogni Litteratura, vol. xiv., p. 37) has put in a claim for a Spanish farrier, by name Reina, who, in a book printed in 1552, but of which there seems to have been an earlier edition (Libro di Maniscalcheria hecho y ordenado por Francisco de la Reyna), asserts, in few and plain words, as Andrès quotes them in Italian, that the blood goes in a circle through all the limbs. I do not know that the book has been seen by anyone else; and it would be desirable to examine the context, since other writers have seemed to know the truth without really apprehending it.