We know little or nothing
of what Harvey had been doing other than his routine work in the care
of the patients at St. Bartholomew's. It was not until April, 1616, that
his lectures began. Chance has preserved to us the notes of this first
course; the MS. is now in the British Museum and was published in
facsimile by the college in 1886.(26)
(26) William Harvey: Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis, London,
J. & A. Churchill, 1886.
The second day lecture, April 17, was concerned with a description of
the organs of the thorax, and after a discussion on the structure and
action of the heart come the lines:
W. H. constat per fabricam cordis sanguinem
per pulmones in Aortam perpetuo
transferri, as by two clacks of a
water bellows to rayse water
constat per ligaturam transitum sanguinis
ab arteriis ad venas
unde perpetuum sanguinis motum
in circulo fieri pulsu cordis.
The illustration will give one an idea of the extraordinarily crabbed
hand in which the notes are written, but it is worth while to see the
original, for here is the first occasion upon which is laid down in
clear and unequivocal words that the blood CIRCULATES. The lecture gave
evidence of a skilled anatomist, well versed in the literature from
Aristotle to Fabricius.
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