of the heart or through the lungs. In 1659 he promises to send him a work of Vinean against the circulation.[1] More extraordinary still is the fact that as late as 1670, twelve years after Harvey’s death, the thesis of one Cordelle, a bachelor of medicine, publicly discussed the circulation of the blood, and Gui Patin, who presided, decided in the negative. The fiction of an ingenious narrator, le doux songe of Harvey, are the terms in which he speaks of it. The whole passage is worth quoting as possibly the last public denouncement of what seemed a rank heresy to the old Galenists : 'Supposer que le sang se meut toujours circulairement, que de la veine cave ascendante il tombe dans Toreillette droite du coeur, que de la il aille traverser toute la substance du poumon pour retomber de la dans Toreillette gauche en passant par la veine pulmonaire, et qu’enfin de la il soit projete dans l’aorte et toutes les arteres qui le feront passer dans les veines et dans le coeur, lui faisant par ce moyen suivre un circuit, voila le doux songe de Harvey, la fiction d’un narrateur ingenieux, mais nullement prouvee par l’evidence. La circulation du sang, son transport circulaire par les vaisseaux, c’est Tenfantement d’un esprit oisif, un vrai nuage qu’embrassent les Ixions pour procreer les Centaurs et les monstres.’[2]
As I said, we can forgive a great deal to the man who has left us such a picture of seventeenth-century life, drawn, all unconsciously, with a master hand; and through the mists of prejudice and hate we can recognize the good sense which had the courage to protest against the forfanterie arabesque et bezoardesque in much of the therapeutics of the day.
