[23] Spr. i. 501.
[24] Ib. ii. 152.
The father of modern anatomy is held to be Mondino,[25] who dissected and taught at Bologna in 1315. Some writers have traced in him the rudiments of the doctrine of the circulation of the blood; for he says that the heart transmits blood to the lungs. But it is allowed, that he afterwards destroys the merit of his remark, by repeating the old assertion that the left ventricle ought to contain spirit or air, which it generates from the blood.
[25] Encyc. Brit. 692. Anatomy.
Anatomy was cultivated with great diligence and talent in Italy by Achillini, Carpa, and Messa, and in France by Sylvius and Stephanus (Dubois and Etienne). Yet still these empty assumptions respecting the heart and blood-vessels kept their ground. Vesalius, a native of Brussels, has been termed the founder of human anatomy, and his great work De Humani Corporis Fabricâ is, even yet, a splendid monument of art, as well as science. It is said that his figures were designed by Titian; and if this be not exactly true, says Cuvier,[26] they must, at least, be from the pencil of one of the most distinguished pupils of the great painter; for to this day, though we have more finished drawings, we have no designs that are more artist-like. Fallopius, who succeeded Vesalius at Padua, made some additions to the researches of his predecessor; but in his treatise De Principio Venarum, it is clearly seen[27] that the circulation of the blood was unknown to him. Eustachius also, whom Cuvier groups with Vesalius and Fallopius, as the three great founders of modern anatomy, wrote a treatise on the vein azygos[28] which is a little treatise on comparative anatomy; but the discovery of the functions of the veins came from a different quarter.
[26] Leçons sur l’Hist. des Sc. Nat. p. 21.
[27] Cuv. Sc. Nat. p. 32.
[28] Ib. p. 34.
[446] The unfortunate Servetus, who was burnt at Geneva as a heretic in 1553, is the first person who speaks distinctly of the small circulation, or that which carries the blood from the heart to the lungs, and back again to the heart. His work entitled Christianismi Restitutio was also burnt; and only two copies are known to have escaped the flames. It is in this work that he asserts the doctrine in question, as a collateral argument or illustration of his subject. “The communication between the right and left ventricle of the heart, is made,” he says, “not as is commonly believed, through the partition of the heart, but by a remarkable artifice (magno artificio) the blood is carried from the right ventricle by a long circuit through the lungs; is elaborated by the lungs, made yellow, and transfused from the vena arteriosa into the arteria venosa.” This truth is, however, mixed with various of the traditional fancies concerning the “vital spirit, which has its origin in the left ventricle.” It may be doubted, also, how far Servetus formed his opinion upon conjecture, and on a hypothetical view of the formation of this vital spirit. And we may, perhaps, more justly ascribe the real establishment of the pulmonary circulation as an inductive truth, to Realdus Columbus, a pupil and successor of Vesalius at Padua, who published a work De Re Anatomicâ in 1559, in which he claims this discovery as his own.[29]
[29] Encyc. Brit.