complete the course before the body which lay on the table became putrid, and the preservative fluids at present in use in dissecting rooms were then unknown. It was Harvey's custom to settle beforehand the exact time he would give to each part, and not to exceed it.
In 1618 (Pharmacopeia Londinensis, 1618) Harvey was physician extraordinary to James I, and on 3 Feb. 1623 he received a promise to be made physician in ordinary on the next vacancy. On 1 Feb. 1620, with Dr. Mayerne and Dr. Clement, he was appointed by the College of Physicians to watch the proceedings of the surgeons who were moving parliament in their own interest. On 17 Feb. he was sent to a conference on the same subject at Gray's Inn, and afterwards to Cambridge, where the university declined to join the College of Physicians (Coll. of Physicians MS. Liber Annalium). On 16 July 1623 he proved, as executor, his father's will in London. A certificate stating that the health of Sir William Sandis, a country gentleman, required his stay in London in the winter of 1624, and signed by Harvey, is preserved in the Public Record Office (Dom. Ser. Charles I, xlvii. No. 9). In the same year he was concerned in the proceedings against one Savery, a quack, and Harvey related to the College of Physicians what the king's majesty told him about Savery pretending to cure epilepsy only. In each year he gave the Lumleian lectures at the College of Physicians, and the notes of those of 1627 (Sir G. E. Paget, An Unpublished Manuscript of Harvey), are in the British Museum (Sloane 486) in a volume somewhat smaller than that containing his first course. It has 121 leaves, of which the first sixty-eight are devoted to the anatomy of the muscles, and most of the remainder to their functions and diseases, of which last he shows a considerable clinical knowledge. In these lectures he quotes Aristotle often and Riolanus once, but in the rarity of his allusions to authors they present a marked contrast to the first course of lectures. In 1628, twelve years after his first statement of it in his lectures, he published at Frankfurt, through William Fitzer, his discovery of the circulation of the blood. The book is small quarto, entitled ‘Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus,’ and contains seventy-two pages and two plates of diagrams. The printers evidently had difficulty in reading the author's handwriting, and there are many misprints. There is a dedication to Charles I, in which the king in his kingdom is compared to the heart in the body, and this is followed by a modest address to Dr. Argent, the president, and to the fellows of the College of Physicians of London. An introduction then states the existing opinions on the structure of the heart and great vessels, on the blood and its movement, for that it moved had of course been observed from the earliest times. Seventeen chapters follow, in which the whole subject is made clear from the beginning and incontestably demonstrated. He begins by modestly stating how the difficulties of the subject had gradually become clear to him, and by expressing, with a quotation from the ‘Andria’ of Terence, the hope that his discovery might help others to still further knowledge. He then describes the motions of arteries, of the ventricles of the heart, and of its auricles, as seen in living animals, and the use of these movements. He shows that the blood coming into the right auricle from the vena cava, and passing then to the right ventricle, is pumped out to the lungs through the pulmonary artery, passes through the parenchyma of the lungs, and comes thence by the pulmonary veins to the left ventricle. This same blood, he shows, is then pumped out to the body. It is carried out by arteries and comes back by veins, performing a complete circulation. He shows that, in a live snake, when the great veins are tied some way from the heart, the piece of vein between the ligature and the heart is empty, and further, that blood coming from the heart is checked in an artery by a ligature, so that there is blood between the heart and the ligature and no blood beyond the ligature. He then shows how the blood comes back to the heart by the veins, and demonstrates their valves. These had before been described by Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, but before Harvey no exact explanation of their function had been given. He gives diagrams showing the results of obstructing veins, and that these valves may thus be seen to prevent the flow of blood in the veins in any direction except towards the heart. After a summary of a few lines in the fourteenth chapter he further illustrates the perpetual circuit of the blood, and points out how morbid materials are carried from the heart all over the body. The last chapter gives a masterly account of the structure of the heart in men and animals, and points out that the right ventricle is thinner than the left because it has only to send the blood a short way into the lungs, while the left ventricle has to pump it all over the body.
This great and original book at once attracted attention and excited discussion. In the College of Physicians of London, where Harvey had mentioned the discovery in his lectures every year since 1616, the Exercitatio
