in affairs of this kind, many of the things above related are not reconcileable with juggling; such as the loud noises beyond the power of man to make, without such instruments as were not there; the tearing and breaking the beds; the throwing about the fire; the hoof treading out the candle; and the striving for the sword, and the blow the man received from the pummel of it."

1762, Feb.

XXXIV. Harvey's Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood.

MR. URBAN,

Sunderland, June 26, 1702. I THOUGHT the glory of discovering the circulation of the blood had now been universally given to our immortal countryman, Dr. Harvey, and that the malice of his opponents was entirely forgotten, and sunk into deserved oblivion. But it is with particular regret that I find so respectable and eminent an author as Dr. Astruc employed in raking together the objections of Vander Linden, Almeloveen, and others, which have been long since fully answered and exploded.

For the sake of such of your readers as may not be acquainted with the affair, I shall endeavour to give a fair statement of these objections, and vindicate the memory of that incomparable man from the depreciating spirit which some envious and malevolent foreigners have shewn against him.

In the year 1623, Dr. Harvey published his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus. No sooner did it appear, than all the anatomists in Europe set themselves to oppose or defend the doctrine which he therein advanced; and this, by the bye, must surely bet allowed one strong proof of its novelty. Some of his opponents entirely denied the truth of the discovery, because many passages in the ancients, of which, indeed, they might collect great numbers, flatly contradicted it. Others pretended to find absurdities and contradictions in it, and when they were beat from these weak holds, they had recourse to their last fort, and boldly charged him with stealing his noble discovery from those very ancients whose authority had just been alleged against him. Thus Vander Linden will give it to Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Erasistratus, Emesius, or, in short, to any body except the only man in the world who was able to make it.

It would waste time to give all their reasons; but it surprises me to find the judicious and learned Spon inclining the same way. Hippocrates says,* * Η τροφή ες τρίχας, και ες ονυχας, και ες την εσχατην επιφανείην ενδοθεν αφικνείται εξωθεν τροφη εκ της COXATNS STIDADEINs dorata. Upon this, M. Spon observes, Circulationem sanguinis hoc seculo ab Harvæo detectam non latuisse magnum Hippocratem textus hic evincere videtur. Quomodo enim alimentum, quo nomine sanguinem intelligit, in extimas usque corporis partes fertur, et ab externis ad interna redit sine circulari sanguinis motu? At si sequentes aphorismos et 20, sect. 2. addideris, ii simul quasi demonstrationem effici ent: he allows, indeed, that the circulation is not taught so distinctly as to explain the impulse of the blood through the arteries, and its return by the veins; but nobody will wonder at this, says he, who considers that many of the works of Hippocrates have perished, especially his book of the veins

and arteries.t

Now it may be proved beyond contradiction, from an infinite number of places, that the divine old man was totally ignorant of the circulation. If any one doubt it, let him read the books De Locis in Homine, De Morbo sacro, De Regimine; nay, even in his very book De Corde, where, if any where, one would expect to find the circulation, there is not a word to the purpose, but many things advanced which are directly opposite to that motion of the blood.

But it is time to come to Dr. Astruc, who contents himself, I find, with giving the glory of the discovery to Michael Servetus, Realdus Columbus, and Andreas Casalpinus.

Servetus, in his famous book entitled Christianismi Restitutio, of which there is a copy in the library of the University of Edinburgh, compares the mystery of the Trinity to the three fluids of the body, namely, blood, phlegm, and spirit. He says the blood being sent from the right ventricle to the pulmonary artery, passes through the lungs, where it receives a considerable change, and returns to the left auricle, impregnated with æther, from whence it is distributed through all the arteries of the body. Here he plainly leans to the notion of the ancients, that the blood, in passing through the lungs, was elaborated and turned into I know not what æther, which was forced into the arteries to nourish,

*De Alimentis.

Aphor. Nov. sect. 1. Aphor. 51.

enliven, and invigorate the body, but he does not mention one word to inform us how this blood is returned.

*

Columbus, indeed, who was pupil to the celebrated Vesalius, goes farther, and in his chapter De Pulmonibus comes near the truth with respect to the circulation through the lungs. He also explains not only the structure, but the use too of every part belonging to the heart, with great exactness, excepting some small mistake about some of the valves; but he does not at all shew us how the blood flows from the arteries to the veins, nor does he seem to comprehend any communication between them. For he assigns the carrying of vital spirits only to the arteries, and in his chapter De Hepate, you will find him a rank Galenist, relapsing into the old opinion, that the liver forces the blood into all the parts of the body.

Casalpinus advances still farther, and is very particular concerning the uses of the valves of the heart, and gives some good observations concerning the pulse, and the veins swelling between the ligature and the extremity upon being tied up; he also uses the word anastomosis, borrowed perhaps, from Servetus, who has used it; by which he supposes the native heat may pass from the arteries to the veins in the time of sleep only, and that it returns from the veins into the arteries while we are awake, not allowing the blood to flow by a continued stream, or with an equal motion, but going and returning frequently backwards and forwards in the same channel; herein following Aristotle, who compares the motion of the blood to the tides of Euripus.

Thus far they went: and now let me ask what all this amounts to? Does it explain "the circulation exactly as it is now taught and believed?" Can this lame, obscure, and, in some respects, false account of the motion of the blood, be compared to the complete, clear, and just idea which our excellent countryman gives us of the circulation. So perfect and full is his account of it, that no author since his time has, in my opinion, treated it in so satisfactory a manner, his book still remaining the best we have upon the subject.

I am surprised Dr. Astruc should omit the name of Vesalius amongst his discoverers. That admirable anatomist, in the 6th book of his incomparable work, De Corporis humani Fabrica, has many strictures upon Galen's account of the functions of the heart, and seems quite dissatisfied therewith, at the same time throwing out several noble hints towards a discovery of the truth. His want of subjects for dissection in Spain, where he was physician to the Emperor Charles V. and the misfortunes which befel him, probably prevented him from pursuing the subject, and, perhaps, completing the discovery.

If Casalpinus's explanation of the circulation be as per fect as Dr. Astruc pretends, how could the bulk of anatomists and physicians remain quite in the dark about it? Riolanus, who was a man of great learning, and in the highest repute for his anatomical skill, bitterly opposed Dr Harvey upon the publication of his first Exercitation, and after he was forced, by the Doctor's plain and simple experiments, to yield to the truth, it was with many exceptions and restrictions. His own notions of it were entirely false, as may be seen in Harvei De Circulatione Sanguinis Exercitatio Prima, addressed to Riolanus himself, although he was no stranger to Casalpinus's book.

I shall readily grant that Servetus, Vesalius, Columbus, Casalpinus, and perhaps others, had some faint glimmerings of the truth, and afforded useful hints towards the discovery; but it was reserved to our countryman alone to see it himself in the clearest light, and to display it to posterity in full meridian splendour.

I will conclude in the words of Boerhaave,* who must surely be allowed to be one of the best judges of this matAfter giving an account of the circulation of the blood, he adds, Hecque est ratio circumeuntis jugiter sanguinis, cujus inventi absoluta doctrina, accurate explanati gloria, immortale cluet Harvei nomen.

1762, July.

I. B.

XXXV. Remarkable Trial for Murder.+

IN the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a person was arraigned before Sir James Dyer, Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, upon an indictment for the murder of a man, who dwelt in the same parish with the prisoner. The first witness against him deposed, That on a certain day, mentioned by the witness in the morning, as he was going through a close, which he particularly described, at some distance from the path, he saw a person lying in a condition that denoted him to be either dead or drunk; that he went to the party, and found him actually dead, two wounds appearing in his breast, and his shirt and clothes much stained with blood; that the wounds appeared to the witness to have

* Institutiones Med. Aphor. 160.

+ This narrative affords another strong instance of the Uncertainty of Human Testimony; see p. 255. E.]

been given by the puncture of a fork or some such instrument, and looking about he discovered a fork lying near the corpse, which he took up, and observed it to be marked with the initial letters of the prisoner's name, the witness at the same time produced the fork in court, which the prisoner owned to be is, and waved asking the witness any questions.

A second witness deposed, That, on the morning of the day on which the deceased was killed, the witness had risen early with an intention to go to a neighbouring market-town which he named-that as he was standing in the entry of his own dwelling-house, the street-door being open, he saw the prisoner come by, dressed in a suit of clothes, the colour and fashion of which the witness described-that he (the witness) was prevented from going to market, and that afterwards the first witness brought notice to the town, of the death, and wounds of the deceased, and of the prisoner's fork being found near the corpse-that upon this report the prisoner was apprehended, and carried before a justice of peace, whom he named and pointed at, he being then present in court-that he (the witness) followed the prisoner to the justice's house and attended his examination, during which he observed the change of raiment which the prisoner had made since the time when the witness had first seen him in the morning-that at the time of such examination the prisoner was dressed in the same clothes which he had on at the time of the trial, and that on the witness's charging him with having changed his clothes, he gave several shuffling answers, and would have denied it,—that upon the witness's mentioning this circumstance of the change of dress, the justice granted a warrant to search the prisoner's house for the clothes described by the witness as having been put off since the morning-that the witness attended and assisted at the search, and that after a nice inquiry for two hours and upwards, the very clothes, which the witness had described, were discovered, concealed in a straw bed.He then produced the bloody clothes in court, which the prisoner owned to be his clothes, and to have been thrust into the straw bed with an intention to conceal them on account of their being bloody.

The prisoner also waved asking this second witness any questions.

A third witness deposed to his having heard the prisoner deliver certain menaces against the deceased, from whence the prosecutor intended to infer a proof of malice prepense. In answer to which, the prisoner proposed certain questions