Chapter M: T. M (8)

While with the king at Oxford he was made warden of Merton College, but a year later, in 1646, that city surrendered to Fairfax, and Harvey returned to London. He was now sixty-eight years old, and, having resigned his appointments and relinquished the cares of practice, lived in learned retirement with one or other of his brothers. It was in his brother Daniel's house at Combe that Dr (afterwards Sir George) Ent, a faithful friend and disciple (1604-1689), visited him in 1650. "I found him," he says, "with a cheerful and sprightly countenance investigating, like Democritus, the nature of things. Asking if all were well with him--'How can that be,' he replied, 'when the state is so agitated with storms and I myself am yet in the open sea? And indeed, were not my mind solaced by my studies and the recollection of the observations I have formerly made, there is nothing which should make me desirous of a longer continuance. But thus employed, this obscure life and vacation from public cares which would disgust other minds is the medicine of mine.'" The work on which he had been chiefly engaged at Oxford, and indeed since the publication of his treatise on the circulation in 1628, was an investigation into the recondite but deeply interesting subject of generation. Charles I. had been an enlightened patron of Harvey's studies, had put the royal deer parks at Windsor and Hampton Court at his disposal, and had watched his demonstration of the growth of the chick with no less interest than the movements of the living heart. Harvey had now collected a large number of observations, though he would probably have delayed their publication. But Ent succeeded in obtaining the manuscripts, with authority to print them or not as he should find them. "I went from him," he says, "like another Jason in possession of the golden fleece, and when I came home and perused the pieces singly, I was amazed that so vast a treasure should have been so long hidden." The result was the publication of the _Exercitationes de generatione_ (1651).

This was the last of Harvey's labours. He had now reached his seventy-third year. His theory of the circulation had been opposed and defended, and was now generally accepted by the most eminent anatomists both in his own country and abroad. He was known and honoured throughout Europe, and his own college (Caius) voted a statue in his honour (1652) _viro monumentis suis immortali_. In 1654 he was elected to the highest post in his profession, that of president of the college; but the following day he met the assembled fellows, and, declining the honour for himself on account of the infirmities of age, recommended the re-election of the late president Dr Francis Prujean (1593-1666). He accepted, however, the office of consiliarius, which he again held in the two following years. He had already enriched the college with other gifts besides the honour of his name. He had raised for them "a noble building of Roman architecture (rustic work with Corinthian pilasters), comprising a great parlour or conversation room below and a library above"; he had furnished the library with books, and filled the museum with "simples and rarities," as well as with specimens of instruments used in the surgical and obstetric branches of medicine. At last he determined to give to his beloved college his paternal estate at Burmarsh in Kent. His wife had died some years before, his brothers were wealthy men, and he was childless, so that he was defrauding no heir when, in July 1656, he made the transfer of this property, then valued at L56 per annum, with provision for a salary to the college librarian and for the endowment of an annual oration, which is still given on the anniversary of the day. The orator, so Harvey orders in his deed of gift, is to exhort the fellows of the college "to search out and study the secrets of nature by way of experiment, and also for the honour of the profession to continue mutual love and affection among themselves."

Harvey, like his contemporary and great successor Thomas Sydenham, was long afflicted with gout, but he preserved his activity of mind to an advanced age. In his eightieth year, on the 3rd of June 1657, he was attacked by paralysis, and though deprived of speech was able to send for his nephews and distribute his watch, ring, and other personal trinkets among them. He died the same evening, "the palsy giving him an easy passport," and was buried with great honour in his brother Eliab's vault at Hempstead in Essex, _annorum et famae satur_. In 1883 the lead coffin containing his remains was enclosed in a marble sarcophagus and moved to the Harvey chapel within the church.

John Aubrey, to whom we owe most of the minor particulars about Harvey which have been preserved, says: "In person he was not tall, but of the lowest stature, round faced, olivaster complexion, little eyes, round, very black, full of spirits; his hair black as a raven, but quite white twenty years before he died." The best portrait of him extant is by Cornelius Jansen in the library of the College of Physicians, one of those rescued from the great fire, which destroyed their original hall in 1666. It has been often engraved, and is prefixed to the fine edition of his works published in 1766.

_Harvey's Work on the Circulation._--In estimating the character and value of the discovery announced in the _Exercitatio de motu cordis et sanguinis_, it is necessary to bear in mind the previous state of knowledge on the subject. Aristotle taught that in man and the higher animals the blood was elaborated from the food in the liver, thence carried to the heart, and sent by it through the veins over the body. His successors of the Alexandrian school of medicine, Erasistratus and Herophilus, further elaborated his system, and taught that, while the veins carried blood from the heart to the members, the arteries carried a subtle kind of air or spirit. For the practical physician only two changes had been made in this theory of the circulation between the Christian era and the 16th century. Galen had discovered that the arteries were not, as their name implies, merely air-pipes, but that they contained blood as well as vital air or spirit. And it had been gradually ascertained that the nerves ([Greek: neura]) which arose from the brain and conveyed "animal spirits" to the body were different from the tendons or sinews ([Greek: neura]) which attach muscles to bones. _First_, then, the physicians of the time of Thomas Linacre knew that the blood is not stagnant in the body. So did Shakespeare and Homer, and every augur who inspected the entrails of a victim, and every village barber who breathed a vein. Plato even uses the expression to [Greek: to aima kata panta ta mele sphodros peripheresthai]. But no one had a conception of a continuous stream returning to its source (a circulation in the true sense of the word) either in the system or in the lungs. If they used the word _circulatio_, as did Caesalpinus,[2] it was as vaguely as the French policeman cries "Circulez." The movements of the blood were in fact thought to be slow and irregular in direction as well as in speed, like the "circulation" of air in a house, or the circulation of a crowd in the streets of a city. _Secondly_, they supposed that one kind of blood flowed from the liver to the right ventricle of the heart, and thence to the lungs and the general system by the veins, and that another kind flowed from the left ventricle to the lungs and general system by the arteries. _Thirdly_, they supposed that the septum of the heart was pervious and allowed blood to pass directly from the right to the left side. _Fourthly_, they had no conception of the functions of the heart as the motor power of the movement of the blood. They doubted whether its substance was muscular; they supposed its pulsation to be due to expansion of the spirits it contained; they believed the only dynamic effect which it had on the blood to be sucking it in during its active diastole, and they supposed the chief use of its constant movements to be the due mixture of blood and spirits.

Of the great anatomists of the 16th century, Sylvius (_In Hipp. et Gal. phys. partem anatom. isagoge_) described the valves of the veins; Vesalius (_De humani corporis fabrica_, 1542) ascertained that the septum between the right and left ventricles is complete, though he could not bring himself to deny the invisible pores which Galen's system demanded. Servetus, in his _Christianismi restitutio_ (1553), goes somewhat farther than his fellow-student Vesalius, and says: "Paries ille medius non est aptus ad communicationem et elaborationem illam; licet aliquid resudare possit"; and, from this anatomical fact and the large size of the pulmonary arteries he concludes that there is a communication in the lungs by which blood passes from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein: "Eodem artificio quo in hepate fit transfusio a vena porta ad venam cavam propter sanguinem, fit etiam in pulmone transfusio a vena arteriosa ad arteriam venosam propter spiritum." The natural spirit of the left side and the vital spirit of the right side of the heart were therefore, he concluded, practically the same, and hence two instead of three distinct _spiritus_ should be admitted. It seems doubtful whether even Servetus rightly conceived of the entire mass of the blood passing through the pulmonary artery and the lungs. The transference of the _spiritus naturalis_ to the lungs, and its return to the left ventricle as _spiritus vitalis_, was the function which he regarded as important. Indeed a true conception of the lesser circulation as a transference of the whole blood of the right side to the left was impossible until the corresponding transference in the greater or systematic circulation was discovered. Servetus, however, was the true predecessor of Harvey in physiology, and his claims to that honour are perfectly authentic and universally admitted.[3]

The way then to Harvey's great work had been paved by the discovery of the valves in the veins, and by that of the lesser circulation--the former due to Sylvius and Fabricius, the latter to Servetus--but the significance of the valves was unsuspected and the fact of even the pulmonary circulation was not generally admitted in its full meaning.

In his treatise Harvey proves (1) that it is the contraction, not the dilatation, of the heart which coincides with the pulse, and that the ventricles as true muscular sacs squeeze the blood which they contain into the aorta and pulmonary artery; (2) that the pulse is not produced by the arteries enlarging and so filling, but by the arteries being filled with blood and so enlarging; (3) that there are no pores in the septum of the heart, so that the whole blood in the right ventricle is sent to the lungs and round by the pulmonary veins to the left ventricle, and also that the whole blood in the left ventricle is again sent into the arteries, round by the smaller veins into the venae cavae, and by them to the right ventricle again--thus making a complete "circulation"; (4) that the blood in the arteries and that in the veins is the same blood; (5) that the action of the right and left sides of the heart, auricles, ventricles and valves, is the same, the mechanism in both being for reception and propulsion of liquid and not of air, since the blood on the right side, though mixed with air, is still blood; (6) that the blood sent through the arteries to the tissues is not all used, but that most of it runs through into the veins; (7) that there is no to and fro undulation in the veins, but a constant stream from the distant parts towards the heart; (8) that the dynamical starting-point of the blood is the heart and not the liver.

The _method_ by which Harvey arrived at his complete and almost faultless solution of the most fundamental and difficult problem in physiology has been often discussed, and is well worthy of attention. He begins his treatise by pointing out the many inconsistencies and defects in the Galenical theory, quoting the writings of Galen himself, of Fabricius, Columbus and others, with great respect, but with unflinching criticism. For, in his own noble language, wise men must learn anatomy, not from the decrees of philosophers, but from the fabric of nature herself, "nec ita in verba jurare antiquitatis magistrae, ut veritatem amicam in apertis relinquant, et in conspectu omnium deserant." He had, as we know, not only furnished himself with all the knowledge that books and the instructions of the best anatomists of Italy could give, but, by a long series of dissections, had gained a far more complete knowledge of the comparative anatomy of the heart and vessels than any contemporary--we may almost say than any successor--until the times of John Hunter and J. F. Meckel. Thus equipped, he tells us that he began his investigations into the movements of the heart and blood by looking at them--i.e. by seeing their action in living animals. After a modest preface, he heads his first chapter "Ex vivorum dissectione, qualis sit cordis motus." He minutely describes what he saw and handled in dogs, pigs, serpents, frogs and fishes, and even in slugs, oysters, lobsters and insects, in the transparent _minima squilla_, "quae Anglice dicitur _a shrimp_," and lastly in the chick while still in the shell. In these investigations he used a _perspicillum_ or simple lens. He particularly describes his observations and experiments on the ventricles, the auricles, the arteries and the veins. He shows how the arrangement of the vessels in the foetus supports his theory. He adduces facts observed in disease as well as in health to prove the rapidity of the circulation. He explains how the mechanism of the valves in the veins is adapted, not, as Fabricius believed, to moderate the flow of blood from the heart, but to favour its flow to the heart. He estimates the capacity of each ventricle, and reckons the rate at which the whole mass of blood passes through it. He elaborately and clearly demonstrates the effect of obstruction of the blood-stream in arteries or in veins, by the forceps in the case of a snake, by a ligature on the arm of a man, and illustrates his argument by figures. He then sums up his conclusion thus: "Circulari quodam motu, in circuitu, agitari in animalibus sanguinem, et esse in perpetuo motu; et hanc esse actionem sive functionem cordis quam pulsu peragit; et omnino motus et pulsus cordis causam unam esse." Lastly, in the 15th, 16th and 17th chapters, he adds certain confirmatory evidence, as the effect of position on the circulation, the absorption of animal poisons and of medicines applied externally, the muscular structure of the heart and the necessary working of its valves. The whole treatise, which occupies only 67 pages of large print in the quarto edition of 1766, is a model of accurate observation, patient accumulation of facts, ingenious experimentation, bold yet cautious hypothesis and logical deduction.

In one point only was the demonstration of the circulation incomplete. Harvey could not discover the capillary channels by which the blood passes from the arteries to the veins. This gap in the circulation was supplied several years later by the great anatomist Marcello Malpighi, who in 1661 saw in the lungs of a frog, by the newly invented microscope, how the blood passes from the one set of vessels to the other. Harvey saw all that could be seen by the unaided eye in his observations on living animals; Malpighi, four years after Harvey's death, by another observation on a living animal, completed the splendid chain of evidence. If this detracts from Harvey's merit it leaves Servetus no merit at all. But in fact the existence of the channels first seen by Malpighi was as clearly pointed to by Harvey's reasoning as the existence of Neptune by the calculations of Leverrier and of Adams.

Harvey himself and all his contemporaries were well aware of the
novelty and importance of his theory. He says in the admirable letter
to Dr Argent, president of the College of Physicians, which follows
the dedication of his treatise to Charles I., that he should not have
ventured to publish "a book which alone asserts that the blood pursues
its course and flows back again by a new path, contrary to the
received doctrine taught so many ages by innumerable learned and
illustrious men," if he had not set forth his theory for more than
nine years in his college lectures, gradually brought it to
perfection, and convinced his colleagues by actual demonstrations of
the truth of what he advanced. He anticipates opposition, and even
obloquy or loss, from the novelty of his views. These anticipations,
however, the event proved to have been groundless. If we are to credit
Aubrey indeed, he found that after the publication of the _De motu_
"he fell mightily in his practice; 'twas believed by the vulgar that
he was crackbrained, and all the physicians were against him." But the
last assertion is demonstrably untrue; and if apothecaries and
patients ever forsook him, they must soon have returned, for Harvey
left a handsome fortune. By his own profession the book was received
as it deserved. So novel a doctrine was not to be accepted without due
inquiry, but his colleagues had heard his lectures and seen his
demonstrations for years; they were already convinced of the truth of
his theory, urged its publication, continued him in his lectureship,
and paid him every honour in their power. In other countries the book
was widely read and much canvassed. Few accepted the new theory; but
no one dreamt of claiming the honour of it for himself, nor for
several years did any one pretend that it could be found in the works
of previous authors. The first attack on it was a feeble tract by one
James Primerose, a pupil of Jean Riolan (_Exerc. et animadv. in libr.
Harvei de motu cord. et sang._, 1630). Five years later Parisanus, an
Italian physician, published his _Lapis Lydius de motu cord. et
sang_. (Venice, 1635), a still more bulky and futile performance.
Primerose's attacks were "imbellia pleraque" and "sine ictu"; that of
Parisanus "in quamplurimis turpius," according to the contemporary
judgment of Johann Vessling. Their dulness has protected them from
further censure. Caspar Hoffmann, professor at Nuremberg, while
admitting the truth of the lesser circulation in the full Harveian
sense, denied the rest of the new doctrine. To him the English
anatomist replied in a short letter, still extant, with great
consideration yet with modest dignity, beseeching him to convince
himself by actual inspection of the truth of the facts in question. He
concludes: "I accept your censure in the candid and friendly spirit in
which you say you wrote it; do you also the same to me, now that I
have answered you in the same spirit." This letter is dated May 1636,
and in that year Harvey passed through Nuremberg with the earl of
Arundel, and visited Hoffmann. But he failed to convince him; "nec
tamen valuit Harveius vel coram," writes P. M. Schlegel, who, however,
afterwards succeeded in persuading the obstinate old Galenist to
soften his opposition to the new doctrine, and thinks that his
complete conversion might have been effected if he had but lived a
little longer--"nec dubito quin concessisset tandem in nostra castra."
While in Italy the following year Harvey visited his old university of
Padua, and demonstrated his views to Professor Vessling. A few months
later this excellent anatomist wrote him a courteous and sensible
letter, with certain objections to the new theory. The answer to this
has not been preserved, but it convinced his candid opponent, who
admitted the truth of the circulation in a second letter (both were
published in 1640), and afterwards told a friend, "Harveium nostrum si
audis, agnosces coelestem sanguinis et spiritus ingressum ex arteriis
per venas in dextrum cordis sinum." Meanwhile a greater convert, R.
Descartes, in his _Discours sur la methode_ (1637) had announced his
adhesion to the new doctrine, and refers to "the English physician to
whom belongs the honour of having first shown that the course of the
blood in the body is nothing less than a kind of perpetual movement in
a circle." J. Walaeus of Leyden, H. Regius of Utrecht and Schlegel of
Hamburg successively adopted the new physiology. Of these professors,
Regius was mauled by the pertinacious Primerose and mauled him in
return (_Spongia qua eluuntur sordes quae Jac. Primirosius_, &c., and
_Antidotum adv. Spongiam venenatam Henr. Regii_). Descartes afterwards
repeated Harvey's vivisections, and, more convinced than ever,
demolished Professor V. F. Plempius of Louvain, who had written on the
other side. George Ent also published an _Apologia pro circulatione
sanguinis_ in answer to Parisanus.

At last Jean Riolan ventured to publish his _Enchiridium anatomicum_
(1648), in which he attacks Harvey's theory, and proposes one of his
own. Riolan had accompanied the queen dowager of France (Maria de'
Medici) on a visit to her daughter at Whitehall, and had there met
Harvey and discussed his theory. He was, in the opinion of the
judicious Haller, "vir asper et in nuperos suosque coaevos immitis ac
nemini parcens, nimis avidus suarum laudum praeco, et se ipso fatente
anatomicorum princeps." Harvey replied to the _Enchiridium_ with
perfectly courteous language and perfectly conclusive arguments, in
two letters _De circulatione sanguinis_, which were published at
Cambridge in 1649, and are still well worth reading. He speaks here of
the "circuitus sanguinis a me inventus." Riolan was unconvinced, but
lived to see another professor of anatomy appointed in his own
university who taught Harvey's doctrines. Even in Italy, Trullius,
professor of anatomy at Rome, expounded the new doctrine in 1651. But
the most illustrious converts were Jean Pecquet of Dieppe, the
discoverer of the thoracic duct, and of the true course of the lacteal
vessels, and Thomas Bartholinus of Copenhagen, in his _Anatome ex
omnium veterum recentiorumque observationibus, imprimis
institutionibus beati mei parentis Caspari Bartholini, ad
circulationem Harveianam et vasa lymphatica renovata_ (Leiden, 1651).
At last Plempius also retracted all his objections; for, as he
candidly stated, "having opened the bodies of a few living dogs, I
find that all Harvey's statements are perfectly true." Hobbes of
Malmesbury could thus say in the preface to his _Elementa
philosophiae_ that his friend Harvey, "solus quod sciam, doctrinam
novam superata invidia vivens stabilivit."

It has been made a reproach to Harvey that he failed to appreciate the
importance of the discoveries of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels by
G. Aselli, J. Pecquet and C. Bartholinus. In three letters on the
subject, one to Dr R. Morison of Paris (1652) and two to Dr Horst of
Darmstadt (1655), a correspondent of Bartholin's, he discusses these
observations, and shows himself unconvinced of their accuracy. He
writes, however, with great moderation and reasonableness, and excuses
himself from investigating the subject further on the score of the
infirmities of age; he was then above seventy-four. The following
quotation shows the spirit of these letters: "Laudo equidem summopere
Pecqueti aliorumque in indaganda veritate industriam singularem, nec
dubito quin multa adhuc in Democriti puteo abscondita sint, a venturi
saeculi indefatigabili diligentia expromenda." Bartholin, though
reasonably disappointed in not having Harvey's concurrence, speaks of
him with the utmost respect, and generously says that the glory of
discovering the movements of the heart and of the blood was enough for
one man.

_Harvey's Work on Generation._--We have seen how Dr. Ent persuaded his friend to publish this book in 1651. It is between five and six times as long as the _Exerc. de motu cord. et sang._, and is followed by excursus _De partu, De uteri membranis, De conceptione_; but, though the fruit of as patient and extensive observations, its value is far inferior. The subject was far more abstruse, and in fact inaccessible to proper investigation without the aid of the microscope. And the field was almost untrodden since the days of Aristotle. Fabricius, Harvey's master, in his work _De formatione ovi et pulli_ (1621), had alone preceded him in modern times. Moreover, the seventy-two chapters which form the book lack the co-ordination so conspicuous in the earlier treatise, and some of them seem almost like detached chapters of a system which was never completed or finally revised.

Aristotle had believed that the male parent furnished the body of the
future embryo, while the female only nourished and formed the seed;
this is in fact the theory on which, in the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus,
Apollo obtains the acquittal of Orestes. Galen taught almost as
erroneously that each parent contributes seeds, the union of which
produced the young animal. Harvey, after speaking with due honour of
Aristotle and Fabricius, begins rightly "ab ovo"; for, as he remarks,
"eggs cost little and are always and everywhere to be had," and
moreover "almost all animals, even those which bring forth their young
alive, and man himself, are produced from eggs" ("omnia omnino
animalia, etiam vivipara, atque hominem adeo ipsum, ex ovo progigni").
This dictum, usually quoted as "omne vivurn ex ovo," would alone stamp
this work as worthy of the discoverer of the circulation of the blood,
but it was a prevision of genius, and was not proved to be a fact
until K. E. von Baer discovered the mammalian ovum in 1827. Harvey
proceeds with a careful anatomical description of the ovary and
oviduct of the hen, describes the new-laid egg, and then gives an
account of the appearance seen on the successive days of incubation,
from the 1st to the 6th, the 10th and the 14th, and lastly describes
the process of hatching. He then comments upon and corrects the
opinions of Aristotle and Fabricius, declares against spontaneous
generation (though in one passage he seems to admit the current
doctrine of production of worms by putrefaction as an exception),
proves that there is no _semen foemineum_, that the chalazae of the
hen's eggs are not the _semen galli_, and that both parents contribute
to the formation of the egg. He describes accurately the first
appearance of the ovarian ova as mere specks, their assumption of yelk
and afterwards of albumen. In chapter xlv. he describes two methods of
production of the embryo from the ovum: one is _metamorphosis_, or the
direct transformation of pre-existing material, as a worm from an egg,
or a butterfly from an _aurelia_ (chrysalis); the other is
_epigenesis_, or development with addition of parts, the true
generation observed in all higher animals. Chapters xlvi.-l. are
devoted to the abstruse question of the efficient cause of generation,
which, after much discussion of the opinions of Aristotle and of
Sennertius, Harvey refers to the action of both parents as the
efficient instruments of the first great cause.[4] He then goes on to
describe the order in which the several parts appear in the chick. He
states that the _punctum saliens_ or foetal heart is the first organ
to be seen, and explains that the nutrition of the chick is not only
effected by yelk conveyed directly into the midgut, as Aristotle
taught, but also by absorption from yelk and white by the umbilical
(omphalomeseraic) veins; on the fourth day of incubation appear two
masses (which he oddly names _vermiculus_), one of which develops into
three vesicles, to form the cerebrum, cerebellum and eyes, the other
into the breastbone and thorax; on the sixth or seventh day come the
viscera, and lastly, the feathers and other external parts. Harvey
points out how nearly this order of development in the chick agrees
with what he had observed in mammalian and particularly in human
embryos. He notes the bifid apex of the foetal heart in man and the
equal thickness of the ventricles, the soft cartilages which represent
the future bones, the large amount of liquor amnii and absence of
placenta which characterize the foetus in the third month; in the
fourth the position of the testes in the abdomen, and the uterus with
its Fallopian tubes resembling the uterus bicornis of the sheep; the
large thymus; the caecum, small as in the adult, not forming a second
stomach as in the pig, the horse and the hare; the lobulated kidneys,
like those of the seal ("_vitulo_," sc. _marino_) and porpoise, and
the large suprarenal veins, not much smaller than those of the kidneys
(li.-lvi). He failed, however, to trace the connexion of the urachus
with the bladder. In the following chapters (lxiii.-lxxii.) he
describes the process of generation in the fallow deer or the roe.
After again insisting that all animals arise from ova, that a
"conception" is an internal egg and an egg an extruded conception, he
goes on to describe the uterus of the doe, the process of
impregnation, and the subsequent development of the foetus and its
membranes, the _punctum saliens_, the cotyledons of the placenta, and
the "uterine milk," to which Sir William Turner recalled attention in
later years. The treatise concludes with detached notes on the
placenta, parturition and allied subjects.

_Harvey's other Writings and Medical Practice._--The remaining writings of Harvey which are extant are unimportant. A complete list of them will be found below, together with the titles of those which we know to be lost. Of these the most important were probably that on respiration, and the records of post-mortem examinations. From the following passage (_De partu_, p. 550) it seems that he had a notion of respiration being connected rather with the production of animal heat than, as then generally supposed, with the cooling of the blood. "Haec qui diligenter perpenderit, naturamque aeris diligenter introspexerit, facile opinor fatebitur eundem nec refrigerationis gratia nec in pabulum animalibus concedi. Haec autem obiter duntaxat de respiratione diximus, proprio loco de eadem forsitan copiosius disceptaturi."

Of Harvey as a practising physician we know very little. Aubrey tells us that "he paid his visits on horseback with a foot-cloth, his man following on foot, as the fashion then was." He adds--"Though all of his profession would allow him to be an excellent anatomist, I never heard any that admired his therapeutic way. I knew several practitioners that would not have given threepence for one of his bills" (the apothecaries used to collect physicians' prescriptions and sell or publish them to their own profit), "and that a man could hardly tell by his bill what he did aim at." However this may have been,--and rational therapeutics was impossible when the foundation stone of physiology had only just been laid,--we know that Harvey was an active practitioner, performing such important surgical operations as the removal of a breast, and he turned his obstetric experience to account in his book on generation. Some good practical precepts as to the conduct of labour are quoted by Percivall Willughby (1596-1685). He also took notes of the anatomy of disease; these unfortunately perished with his other manuscripts. Otherwise we might regard him as a forerunner of G. B. Morgagni; for Harvey saw that pathology is but a branch of physiology, and like it must depend first on accurate anatomy. He speaks strongly to this purpose in his first epistle to Riolan: "Sicut enim sanorum et boni habitus corporum dissectio plurimum ad philosophiam et rectam physiologiam facit, ita corporum morbosorum et cachecticorum inspectio potissimum ad pathologiam philosophicam." The only specimen we have of his observations in morbid anatomy is his account of the post-mortem examination made by order of the king on the body of the famous Thomas Parr, who died in 1635, at the reputed age of 152. Harvey insists on the value of physiological truths for their own sake, independently of their immediate utility; but he himself gives us an interesting example of the practical application of his theory of the circulation in the cure of a large tumour by tying the arteries which supplied it with blood (_De generat._ Exerc. xix.).

The following is believed to be a complete list of all the known
writings of Harvey, published and unpublished:--

_Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis_, 4to
(Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1628); _Exercitationes duae anatomicae de
circulatione sanguinis, ad Johannem Riolanum, filium, Parisiensem_
(Cambridge, 1649); _Exercitationes de generatione animalium, quibus
accedunt quaedam de partu, de membranis ac humoribus uteri, et de
conceptione_, 4to (London, 1651); _Anatomia Thomae Parr_, first
published in the treatise of Dr John Betts, _De ortu et natura
sanguinis_, 8vo (London, 1669). Letters: (1) to Caspar Hoffmann of
Nuremberg, May 1636; (2) to Schlegel of Hamburg, April 1651; (3) three
to Giovanni Nardi of Florence, July 1651, Dec. 1653 and Nov. 1655; (4)
two to Dr Morison of Paris, May 1652; (5) two to Dr Horst of
Darmstadt, Feb. 1654-1655 and July 1655; (6) to Dr Vlackveld of
Haarlem, May 1657. His letters to Hoffmann and Schlegel are on the
circulation; those to Morison, Horst and Vlackveld refer to the
discovery of the lacteals; the two to Nardi are short letters of
friendship. All these letters were published by Sir George Ent in his
collected works (Leiden, 1687). Of two MS. letters, one on official
business to the secretary Dorchester was printed by Dr Aveling, with a
facsimile of the crabbed handwriting (_Memorials of Harvey_, 1875),
and the other, about a patient, appears in Dr Robert Willis's _Life of
Harvey_ (1878). _Praelectiones anatomiae universalis per me Gul.
Harveium medicum Londinensem, anat. et chir. professorem, an. dom._
(1616), _aetat._ 37,--MS. notes of his Lumleian lectures in
Latin,--are in the British Museum library; an autotype reproduction
was issued by the College of Physicians in 1886. An account of a
second MS. in the British Museum, entitled _Gulielmus Harveius de
musculis, motu locali_, &c., was published by Sir G. E. Paget (_Notice
of an unpublished MS. of Harvey_, London, 1850). The following
treatises, or notes towards them, were lost either in the pillaging of
Harvey's house, or perhaps in the fire of London, which destroyed the
old College of Physicians: _A Treatise on Respiration_, promised and
probably at least in part completed (pp. 82, 550, ed. 1766);
_Observationes de usu Lienis_; _Observationes de motu locali_, perhaps
identical with the above-mentioned manuscript; _Tractatum
physiologicum_; _Anatomia medicalis_ (apparently notes of morbid
anatomy); _De generatione insectorum_. The fine 4to edition of
Harvey's Works, published by the Royal College of Physicians in 1766,
was superintended by Dr Mark Akenside; it contains the two treatises,
the account of the post-mortem examination of old Parr, and the six
letters enumerated above. A translation of this volume by Dr Willis,
with Harvey's will, was published by the Sydenham Society, 8vo
(London, 1849).

The following are the principal biographies of Harvey: in Aubrey's
_Letters of Eminent Persons_, &c., vol. ii. (London, 1813), first
published in 1685, the only contemporary account; in Bayle's
_Dictionnaire historique et critique_ (1698 and 1720; Eng. ed., 1738);
in the _Biographia Britannica_, and in Aitken's _Biographical
Memoirs_; the Latin Life by Dr Thomas Lawrence, prefixed to the
college edition of Harvey's _Works_ in 1766; memoir in _Lives of
British Physicians_ (London, 1830); a Life by Dr Robert Willis,
founded on that by Lawrence, and prefixed to his English edition of
Harvey in 1847; the much enlarged Life by the same author, published
in 1878; the biography by Dr William Munk in the _Roll of the College
of Physicians_, vol. i. (2nd ed., 1879).

The literature which has arisen on the great discovery of Harvey, on
his methods and his merits, would fill a library. The most important
contemporary writings have been mentioned above. The following list
gives some of the most remarkable in modern times: the article in
Bayle's dictionary quoted above; _Anatomical Lectures_, by Wm. Hunter,
M.D. (1784); Sprengell, _Geschichte der Arzneikunde_ (Halle, 1800),
vol. iv.; Flourens, _Histoire de la circulation_ (1854); Lewes,
_Physiology of Common Life_ (1859), vol. i. pp. 291-345; Ceradini, _La
Scoperta della circolazione del sangue_ (Milan, 1876); Tollin, _Die
Entdeckung des Blutkreislaufs durch Michael Servet_ (Jena, 1876);
Kirchner, _Die Entdeckung des Blutkreislaufs_ (Berlin, 1878); Willis,
in his Life of Harvey; Wharton Jones, "Lecture on the Circulation of
the Blood," _Lancet_ for Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, 1879; and the various
_Harveian Orations_, especially those by Sir E. Sieveking, Dr Guy and
Professor George Rolleston. (P. H. P.-S.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Ignoscant mihi niveae animae, si, summarum injuriarum memor,
levem gemitum effudero. Doloris mihi haec causa est: cum, inter
nuperos nostros tumultus et bella plusquam civilia, serenissimum
regem (idque non solum senatus permissione sed et jussu) sequor,
rapaces quaedam manus non modo aedium mearum supellectilem omnem
expilarunt, sed etiam, quae mihi causa gravior querimoniae,
adversaria mea, multorum annorum laboribus parta, e museo meo
summoverunt. Quo factum est ut observationes plurimae, praesertim de
generatione insectorum, cum republicae literariae (ausim dicere)
detrimento, perierint."--_De gen._, Ex. lxviii. To this loss Cowley
refers--

"O cursed war! who can forgive thee this?
Houses and towns may rise again,
And ten times easier 'tis
To rebuild Paul's than any work of his."

[2] Indeed the same word, [Greek: periodos haimatos], occurs in the
Hippocratic writings, and was held by Van der Linden to prove that to
the father of medicine himself, and not to Columbus or Caesalpinus,
belonged the laurels of Harvey.

[3] Realdo Columbus (_De re anatomica_, 1559) formally denies the
muscularity of the heart, yet correctly teaches that blood and
spirits pass from the right to the left ventricle, not through the
septum but through the lungs, "quod nemo hactenus aut animadvertit
aut scriptum reliquit." The fact that Harvey quotes Columbus and not
Servetus is explained by the almost entire destruction of the
writings of the latter, which are now among the rarest curiosities.
The great anatomist Fabricius, Harvey's teacher at Padua, described
the valves of the veins more perfectly than had Sylvius. Carlo Ruini,
in his treatise on the _Anatomy and Diseases of the Horse_ (1590),
taught that the left ventricle sends blood and vital spirits to all
parts of the body except the lungs--the ordinary Galenical doctrine.
Yet on the strength of this phrase Professor J. B. Ercolani actually
put up a tablet in the veterinary school at Bologna to Ruini as the
discoverer of the circulation of the blood! The claims of
Caesalpinus, a more plausible claimant to Harvey's laurels, are
scarcely better founded. In his _Quaestiones peripateticae_ (1571) he
followed Servetus and Columbus in describing what we now know as the
pulmonary "circulation" under that name, and this is the only
foundation for the assertion (first made in Bayle's dictionary) that
Caesalpinus knew "the circulation of the blood." He is even behind
Servetus, for he only allows part of the blood of the right ventricle
to go round by this "circuit"; some, he conceives, passes through the
hypothetical pores in the septum, and the rest by the superior cava
to the head and arms, by the inferior to the rest of the body: "Hanc
esse venarum utilitatem ut omnes partes corporis sanguinem pro
nutrimento deferant. Ex dextro ventr deg. cordis vena cava sanguinem
crassiorem, in quo calor intensus est magis, ex altero autern ventr
deg., sanguinem temperatissimum ac sincerissimum habente, egreditur
aorta." Caesalpinus seems to have had no original views on the
subject; all that he writes is copied from Galen or from Servetus
except some erroneous observations of his own. His greatest merit was
as a botanist; and no claim to the "discovery of the circulation" was
made by him or by his contemporaries. When it was made, Haller
decided conclusively against it. The fact that an inscription has
been placed on the bust of Caesalpinus at Rome, which states that he
preceded others in recognizing and demonstrating "the general
circulation of the blood," is only a proof of the blindness of
misplaced national vanity.

[4] So in Exerc. liv.: "Superior itaque et divinior opifex, quam est
homo, videtur hominem fabricare et conservare, et nobilior artifex,
quam gallus, pullum ex ovo producere. Nempe agnoscimus Deum,
creatorem summum atque omnipotentem, in cunctorum animalium fabrica
ubique praesentem esse, et in operibus suis quasi digito monstrari:
cujus in procreatione pulli instrumenta sint gallus et gallina....
Nec cuiquam sane haec attributa conveniunt nisi omnipotenti rerum
Principio, quocunque demum nomine idipsum appellare libuerit: sive
Mentem divinam cum Aristotele, sive cum Platone Animam Mundi, aut cum
aliis Naturam naturantem, vel cum ethnicis Saturnum aut Iovem; vel
potius (ut nos decet) Creatorem ac Patrem omnium quae in coelis et
terris, a quo animalia eorumque origines dependent, cujusque nutu
sive effatu fiunt et generantur omnia."

HARVEY, a city of Cook county, Illinois, U.S.A., about 18 m. S. of the Chicago Court House. Pop. (1900) 5395 (982 foreign-born); (1910) 7227. It is served by the Chicago Terminal Transfer, the Grand Trunk and the Illinois Central railways. Harvey is a manufacturing and residence suburb of Chicago. Among its manufactures are railway, foundry and machine-shop supplies, mining and ditching machinery, stone crushers, street-making and street-cleaning machinery, stoves and motor-vehicles. It was named in honour of Turlington W. Harvey, a Chicago capitalist, founded in 1890, incorporated as a village in 1891 and chartered as a city in 1895.

HARWICH, a municipal borough and seaport in the Harwich parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the extremity of a small peninsula projecting into the estuary of the Stour and Orwell, 70 m. N.E. by E. of London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901), 10,070. It occupies an elevated situation, and a wide view is obtained from Beacon Hill at the southern end of the esplanade. The church of St Nicholas was built of brick in 1821; and there are a town hall and a custom-house. The harbour is one of the best on the east coast of England, and in stormy weather is largely used for shelter. A breakwater and sea-wall prevent the blocking of the harbour entrance and encroachments of the sea; and there is another breakwater at Landguard Point on the opposite (Suffolk) shore of the estuary. The principal imports are grain and agricultural produce, timber and coal, and the exports cement and fish. Harwich is one of the principal English ports for continental passenger traffic, steamers regularly serving the Hook of Holland, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Esbjerg, Copenhagen and Hamburg. The continental trains of the Great Eastern railway run to Parkeston Quay, 1 m. from Harwich up the Stour, where the passenger steamers start. The fisheries are important, principally those for shrimps and lobsters. There are cement and shipbuilding works. The port is the headquarters of the Royal Harwich Yacht Club. There are batteries at and opposite Harwich, and modern works on Shotley Point, at the fork of the two estuaries. There are also several of the Martello towers of the Napoleonic era. At Landguard Fort there are important defence works with heavy modern guns commanding the main channel. This has been a point of coast defence since the time of James I. Between the Parkeston Quay and Town railway stations is that of Dovercourt, an adjoining parish and popular watering-place. Harwich is under a mayor, 4 aldermen and 12 councillors. Area, 1541 acres.

Harwich (Herewica, Herewyck) cannot be shown to have been inhabited very early, although in the 18th century remains of a camp, possibly Roman, existed there. Harwich formed part of the manor of Dovercourt. It became a borough in 1319 by a charter of Edward II., which was confirmed in 1342 and 1378, and by each of the Lancastrian kings. The exact nature and degree of its self-government is not clear. Harwich received charters in 1547, 1553 and 1560. In 1604 James I. gave it a charter which amounted to a new constitution, and from this charter begins the regular parliamentary representation. Two burgesses had attended parliament in 1343, but none had been summoned since. Until 1867 Harwich returned two members; it then lost one, and in 1885 it was merged in the county. Included in the manor of Dovercourt, Harwich from 1086 was for long held by the de Vere family. In 1252 Henry III. granted to Roger Bigod a market here every Tuesday, and a fair on Ascension day, and eight days after. In 1320 a grant occurs of a Tuesday market, but no fair is mentioned. James I. granted a Friday market, and two fairs, at the feast of St Philip and St James, and on St Luke's day. The fair has died out, but markets are still held on Tuesday and Friday. Harwich has always had a considerable trade; in the 14th century merchants came even from Spain, and there was much trade in wheat and wool with Flanders. But the passenger traffic appears to have been as important at Harwich in the 14th century as it is now. Shipbuilding was a considerable industry at Harwich in the 17th century.

HARZBURG, a town of Germany, in the duchy of Brunswick, beautifully situated in a deep and well-wooded vale at the north foot of the Harz Mountains, at the terminus of the Brunswick-Harzburg railway, 5 m. E.S.E. from Goslar and 18 m. S. from Wolfenbuttel. Pop. (1905), 4396. The Radau, a mountain stream, descending from the Brocken, waters the valley and adds much to its picturesque charm. The town is much frequented as a summer residence. It possesses brine and carbonated springs, the Juliushall saline baths being about a mile to the south of the town, and a hydropathic establishment. A mile and a half south from the town lies the Burgberg, 1500 ft. above sea-level, on whose summit, according to tradition, was once an altar to the heathen idol Krodo, still to be seen in the Ulrich chapel at Goslar. There are on the summit of the hill the remains of an old castle, and a monument erected in 1875 to Prince Bismarck, with an inscription taken from one of his speeches against the Ultramontane claims of Rome--"_Nach Canossa gehen wir nicht_."

The castle on the Burgberg called the Harzburg is famous in German history. It was built between 1065 and 1069, but was laid in ruins by the Saxons in 1074; again it was built and again destroyed during the struggle between the emperor Henry IV. and the Saxons. By Frederick I. it was granted to Henry the Lion, who caused it to be rebuilt about 1180. It was a frequent residence of Otto IV., who died therein, and after being frequently besieged and taken, it passed to the house of Brunswick. It ceased to be of importance as a fortress after the Thirty Years' War, and gradually fell into ruins.

See Delius, _Untersuchungen uber die Geschichte der Harzburg_
(Halberstadt, 1826); Dommes, _Harzburg und seine Umgebung_ (Goslar,
1862); Jacobs, _Die Harzburg und ihre Geschichte_ (1885); and Stolle,
_Fuhrer von Bad Harzburg_ (1899).

HARZ MOUNTAINS (also spelt HARTZ, Ger. _Harzgebirge_, anc. _Silva Hercynia_), the most northerly mountain-system of Germany, situated between the rivers Weser and Elbe, occupy an area of 784 sq. m., of which 455 belong to Prussia, 286 to Brunswick and 43 to Anhalt. Their greatest length extends in a S.E. and N.W. direction for 57 m., and their maximum breadth is about 20 m. The group is made up of an irregular series of terraced plateaus, rising here and there into rounded summits, and intersected in various directions by narrow, deep valleys. The north-western and higher part of the mass is called the Ober or Upper Harz; the south-eastern and more extensive part, the Unter or Lower Harz; while the N.W. and S.W. slopes of the Upper Harz form the Vorharz. The Brocken group, which divides the Upper and Lower Harz, is generally regarded as belonging to the first. The highest summits of the Upper Harz are the Brocken (3747 ft.), the Heinrichshohe (3425 ft.), the Konigsberg (3376 ft.) and the Wurmberg (3176 ft.); of the Lower Harz, the Josephshohe in the Auerberg group and the Viktorhohe in the Ramberg, each 1887 ft. Of these the Brocken (q.v.) is celebrated for the legends connected with it, immortalized in Goethe's _Faust_. Streams are numerous, but all small. While rendered extensively useful, by various skilful artifices, in working the numerous mines of the district, at other parts of their course they present the most picturesque scenery in the Harz. Perhaps the finest valley is the rocky Bodethal, with the Rosstrappe, the Hexentanzplatz, the Baumannshohle and the Bielshohle.

The Harz is a mass of Palaeozoic rock rising through the Mesozoic
strata of north Germany, and bounded on all sides by faults. Slates,
schists, quartzites and limestones form the greater part of the hills,
but the Brocken and Victorshohe are masses of intrusive granite, and
diabases and diabase tuffs are interstratified with the sedimentary
deposits. The Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous systems are
represented--the Silurian and Devonian forming the greater part of the
hills S.E. of a line drawn from Lauterberg to Wernigerode, while N.W.
of this line the Lower Carboniferous predominates. A few patches of
Upper Carboniferous are found on the borders of the hills near Ilfeld,
Ballenstedt, &c., lying unconformably upon the Devonian. The structure
of the Harz is very complicated, but the general strike of the folds,
especially in the Oberharz plateau, is N.E. or N.N.E. The whole mass
evidently belongs to the ancient Hercynian chain of North Europe
(which, indeed, derives its name from the Harz), and is the
north-easterly continuation of the rocks of the Ardennes and the
Eifel. The folding of the old rocks took place towards the close of
the Palaeozoic era; but the faulting to which they owe their present
position was probably Tertiary. Metalliferous veins are common,
amongst the best-known being the silver-bearing lead veins of
Klausthal, which occur in the Culm or Lower Carboniferous.

Owing to its position as the first range which the northerly winds strike after crossing the north German plain, the climate on the summit of the Harz is generally raw and damp, even in summer. In 1895 an observatory was opened on the top of the Brocken, and the results of the first five years (1806-1900) showed a July mean of 50 deg. Fahr., a February mean of 24.7 deg., and a yearly mean of 36.6 deg. During the same five years the rainfall averaged 64(1/3) ins. annually. But while the summer is thus relatively ungenial on the top of the Harz, the usual summer heat of the lower-lying valleys is greatly tempered and cooled; so that, adding this to the natural attractions of the scenery, the deep forests, and the legendary and romantic associations attaching to every fantastic rock and ruined castle, the Harz is a favourite summer resort of the German people. Among the more popular places of resort are Harzburg, Thale and the Bodethal; Blankenburg, with the Teufelsmauer and the Hermannshohle; Wernigerode, Ilsenburg, Grund, Lauterberg, Hubertusbad, Alexisbad and Suderode. Some of these, and other places not named, add to their natural attractions the advantage of mineral springs and baths, pine-needle baths, whey cures, &c. The Harz is penetrated by several railways, among them a rack-railway up the Brocken, opened in 1898. The district is traversed by excellent roads in all directions.

The northern summits are destitute of trees, but the lower slopes of the Upper Harz are heavily wooded with pines and firs. Between the forests of these stretch numerous peat-mosses, which contain in their spongy reservoirs the sources of many small streams. On the Brocken are found one or two arctic and several alpine, plants. In the Lower Harz the forests contain a great variety of timber. The oak, elm and birch are common, while the beech especially attains an unusual size and beauty. The walnut-tree grows in the eastern districts.

The last bear was killed in the Harz in 1705, and the last lynx in 1817, and since that time the wolf too has become extinct; but deer, foxes, wild cats and badgers are still found in the forests.

The Harz is one of the richest mineral storehouses in Germany, and the chief industry is mining, which has been carried on since the middle of the 10th century. The most important mineral is a peculiarly rich argentiferous lead, but gold in small quantities, copper, iron, sulphur, alum and arsenic are also found. Mining is carried on principally at Klausthal and St Andreasberg in the Upper Harz. Near the latter is one of the deepest mining shafts in Europe, namely the Samson, which goes down 2790 ft. or 720 ft. below sea-level. For the purpose of getting rid of the water, and obviating the flooding of such deep workings, it has been found necessary to construct drainage works of some magnitude. As far back as 1777-1799 the Georgsstollen was cut through the mountains from the east of Klausthal westward to Grund, a distance of 4 m.; but this proving insufficient, another sewer, the Ernst-Auguststollen, no less than 14 m. in length, was made from the same neighbourhood to Gittelde, at the west side of the Harz, in 1851-1864. Marble, granite and gypsum are worked; and large quantities of vitriol are manufactured. The vast forests that cover the mountain slopes supply the materials for a considerable trade in timber. Much wood is exported for building and other purposes, and in the Harz itself is used as fuel. The sawdust of the numerous mills is collected for use in the manufacture of paper. Turf-cutting, coarse lace-making and the breeding of canaries and native song-birds also occupy many of the people. Agriculture is carried on chiefly on the plateaus of the Lower Harz; but there is excellent pasturage both in the north and in the south. In the Lower Harz, as in Switzerland, the cows, which carry bells harmoniously tuned, are driven up into the heights in early summer, returning to the sheltered regions in late autumn.