The Harveian Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Physicians
Authors: J. W. Ogle
Journal: BMJ (1880)

Contiinuedfrorn _Aage 9 of last number.]SUCH, given very roughly and cursorily, and in a very condensed manner, is the course of the general progress of our approaches towards -the full and proper discovery and presentation of the circulation of the blood.One step led on to another, as is the case with all truth and all sci- ence, each the inevitable and irresistible result of the former.Summarising in chronological order the most salient anatomical facts which had been established respecting the circulation, we may regard i.The distinction between arteries and veins as demonstrated by Galen;2. The non-communication between the two ventricles of the heart in man as demonstrated by Vesalius;3. The true nature of the valves of the veins as arrived at by Sylvius, St. Estienne, Fabricius, and others; 4. The pulmonary or smaller circulation as determined by Servetus.These great facts, these scattered limbs of truth, being recognised, the wonder surely is, not that they led up to anything further, but that the goal and consummation was not earlier reached, and that the world should still have had to wait for fifty years after Fabricius had pub- lished his views on the valves.The tree of knowledge at length fructi- fied.At last appeared the master mind, the interpreting genius, and the glory of his generation and century-the immortal Harvey, Decus et desideriiztmznos/rutm, the bright unclouded constellation standing out in relief from the dark background, never to be extinguished.It was, as Daremberg observes, "as at the dawn of creation chaos cleared up, the light separated from the darkness.Harviey considers a long time, and he finishes by seeing; he makes few experiments, but they are decisive; he uses arguments, but they are conclusive".Renouncing the to-and-fro, or, as it may be terned, the tidal, theory of the circulation, and reasoning upon already ascertained facts, and upon his own observations, and direct, varied, and reiterated experi- ments on living and dead animals, fcetal and adult, Harvey changed -everything.With a mind trained by the study of physics and classics, he was enabled by a wise insight, and by his powers of analysis and comparison, to trace a new route for the blood, to establish by precise demonstration its general circulation as we now know and understand it, and thus, by giving a foundation for rational physiology, he achieved for medicine an entire transformation.But the greatest, perhaps the chief, suyppor/ of his theory is obtained firom his accurwate observationt and demitonstration on the mechanismn and use of /he miovements ofthe heart itse/f " Die Lehre vom Kreislauf vor Harvey, eine historische abhandlung", Berlin, I83I (T.H. Herbig).He considers Galen to be the true discoverer of the circulation.t Referring to such consequences, Harvey hinmself observes (see chapter xvi of his work on the Action of the Heart and Blood):-" Finally, reflecting on every part of medicine, physiology, pathology, therapeutics, when I see how many questions can be answered, how many doubts resolved, how much obscurity illustrated, by the truth we have declared, the light we have made to shine, I see a field of such vast extent, in which I might proceed so far, and expatiate so widely, that this my tractate would actually swell into a volume which was beyond my purpose, but my whole life, perchance, would not suffice for its completion."