Harvey, by the diversity, the variety, and the thoroughness of his
investigations, was enabled to give an entirely new direction to at least
two branches—and two of the most important branches—of what
now-a-days we call Biological Science. On the one hand, he founded all our
modern physiology by the discovery of the exact nature of the motions of
the heart, and of the course in which the blood is propelled through the
body; and, on the other, he laid the foundation of that study of
development which has been so much advanced of late years, and which
constitutes one of the great pillars of the doctrine of evolution. This
doctrine, I need hardly tell you, is now tending to revolutionise our
conceptions of the origin of living things, exactly in the same way as
Harvey's discovery of the circulation in the seventeeth century
revolutionised the conceptions which men had previously entertained with
regard to physiological processes.
It would, I regret, be quite impossible for me to attempt, in the course
of the time I can presume to hold you here, to unfold the history of more
than one of these great investigations of Harvey. I call them "great
investigations," as distinguished from "large publications." I have in my
hand a little book, which those of you who are at a great distance may
have some difficulty in seeing, and which I value very much. It is, I am
afraid, sadly thumbed and scratched with annotations by a very humble
successor and follower of Harvey. This little book is the edition of 1651
of the 'Exercitationes de Generatione'; and if you were to add another
little book, printed in the same small type, and about one-seventh of the
thickness, you would have the sum total of the printed matter which Harvey
contributed to our literature. And yet in that sum total was contained, I
may say, the materials of two revolutions in as many of the main branches
of biological science. If Harvey's published labours can be condensed into
so small a compass, you must recollect that it is not because he did not
do a great deal more. We know very well that he did accumulate a very
considerable number of observations on the most varied topics of medicine,
surgery, and natural history. But, as I mentioned to you just now, Harvey,
for a time, took the royal side in the domestic quarrel of the Great
Rebellion, as it is called; and the Parliament, not unnaturally resenting
that action of his, sent soldiers to seize his papers. And while I imagine
they found nothing treasonable among those papers, yet, in the process of
rummaging through them, they destroyed all the materials which Harvey had
spent a laborious life in accumulating; and hence it is that the man's
work and labours are represented by so little in apparent bulk.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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