The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays

by Roswell Park

Such was the spirit of the times in which Harvey lived, and such the influences which surrounded his teachers before him and himself in turn. It makes a long preface to a consideration of what Harvey himself accomplished, but it is not without its interest because men and their deeds must be judged largely by their environment. Now, to speak more particularly of Harvey himself, and what was known of the circulation when he undertook his investigations.

The liver had been considered, from time immemorial, as the principal factor in the production and movement of the blood. The ancients supposed that here the veins took their origin and that through them the blood flowed to all parts of the body, returning to its source by an undulating movement or series of alternate waves. The arteries had been supposed to contain only vital spirits, whose great reservoir was the heart, although Erasistratus had admitted that in certain cases blood might escape into the arterial channels. Later Galen showed that the arteries always contained blood, and he knew that blood was poured into the right side of the heart by the great veins, but believed that only a little of it passed from the right ventricle into the lungs, the greater part of it passing through hypothetical pores in the septum and thus into the left ventricle. This opinion, like Galen's in other respects, remained unchanged until the middle of the 16th century. It was also known that valves existed within the veins, and that if an artery were tied on a living animal blood would cease to flow and pulsation be checked below the ligature, while if a vein were tied it shrunk above the ligature and became distended below.

Three men before Harvey's time came very near to discovering the secret that made him famous; in fact, they made such advances on what was already known that history should accord them a distinguished place. One was Columbus, who was born at Cremona in 1490, and died in 1559. He was first a pupil and prosector and then a friend of Vesalius, the great anatomist. Later he succeeded him at The University of Padua and unfortunately, after gaining his position, ungratefully turned upon his old teacher. He was, however, for his day a good anatomist and especially a good osteologist. It was he who first demonstrated experimentally that blood passes through the lungs into the pulmonary veins and that the latter connect with the left ventricle. He thus practically established the fact of the lesser circulation. He suffered, however, as did Servetus, from the prevailing notion that spirits and blood were mixed together. From Padua Columbus went to Pisa, and then to Rome. He wrote with elegance and correctness of style and even described the vessels which penetrate the bone cells, the ossicles of the ear, the minute anatomy of the teeth, the ventricles of the larynx, as well as those valves which prevent the return of blood from the lungs to the heart. In fact, he narrowly missed the significance of the actual facts of the case, simply failing in his final analysis and assembling of those facts which he had already demonstrated.

Cesalpinus, who lived a little later, came still nearer the mark, having accepted the teachings of Columbus regarding the course of the blood through the lungs. He added that the ultimate arterial branches connect with those of the veins, and he taught that blood and vital spirits, from which the ancients could never separate themselves, passed from the arteries into the veins during sleep, as was demonstrated by the swelling of the veins and the diminution of the pulse at that time.

A little later came Michael Servetus, who figures principally in history as a theologian and a victim of theologians, since he perished a martyr to Calvin's jealousy. He was, in effect, a wisely and widely educated man who did a great deal for science, one of the offences attributed to him being an edition of Ptolemy's geography, in which Judea was described as a barren and inhospitable land instead of one "flowing with milk and honey." This simple statement of a geographical fact was made a tremendous weapon of offence by Calvin, who replied that even if Servetus had only quoted from Ptolemy and, although there were ample geographical proofs, it nevertheless "unnecessarily inculpated Moses and grievously outraged The Holy Ghost." Servetus dared to deny the passage of the blood through the septum of the heart, and contended that that which comes into the right side was distributed to the lung and returned to the left ventricle. He published his views, however, in a religious treatise on Errors concerning The Trinity, a most unfortunate place in which to inject such an important fact, since it gave his enemies a still greater opportunity to vent and ventilate their spleen. Had he been able to leave out that notion of vital spirits, which prevailed with all his predecessors, he might actually have made the great discovery left for Harvey to enunciate. I have not been able to refer to original documents in this matter, but it is claimed by some that his description of the circulation was contained in another religious work concerning the Restitution of Christianity, which was printed in Nuremberg in 1790.

Such was the actual state of knowledge concerning the movements of the blood and the functions of the heart when Harvey published his great work. It behooves us now to proceed with a short account of Harvey's own life and researches.

William Harvey was born at Folkestone on the first of April, 1578. He was the eldest son of a prosperous merchant who raised a large family and who occupied the highest positions of honor in his own town. The son William was born to his second wife, by whom he had seven sons and two daughters. All of these children were helped to remunerative or honorable positions. They became merchants or politicians or secured prominence in some way, but William was the only one to study medicine. He was sent to the King's school at Canterbury, in 1588, and he was admitted at Caius, in Cambridge, in 1593, where he graduated in arts in 1597. The following year he went to Padua, which then had one of the greatest medical schools of the time, and he obtained his medical diploma in 1602, when twenty-four years of age. Returning to England he received a doctor's degree at Cambridge, and shortly afterward married a daughter of a London physician and entered upon the practice of medicine in London.

In the great city his practice as a physician seems to have been from the outset successful, and his knowledge and ability procured him various valuable appointments. He was made a Fellow of The College of Physicians in 1607. This Royal College of Physicians was given a grant of incorporation by Henry VIII in 1518, at the intercession of Chambers, Linacre and Ferdinand Victoria, the King's Physicians, it being under the patronage of Cardinal Wolsey. The first meetings were held at Linacre's house which he bequeathed to the corporation at his death. Until this College was founded practitioners of medicine were licensed to practise by the Bishop of London or by the Dean of St. Paul's.

A few years later Harvey was appointed Physician-Extraordinary to King James I, and later yet, after the publication of his great treatise and its dedication to the King, he was made Physician-in-Ordinary to Charles I, whom he attended during the Civil Wars.