The Harveian oration : delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1895 / by William Selby Church.

  • Church, William S., Sir, 1837-
Date:
1896
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Harveian oration : delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18th, 1895 / by William Selby Church. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Note o, p. 25. Exercise iii. In the course of this exercise Harvey writes, “ We may be permitted to ask whether in man, whilst he lives, there is not a passage from openings of the same kind into the cavity of the thorax ? For how else should the pus poured out in empyema and the blood extravasated in pleurisy make its escape ? In pene- trating wounds of the chest, the lungs themselves being uninjured, air often escapes by the wound ; or liquids thrown into the cavity of the thorax are discharged with the expectoration. But our views on this subject will be found fully expressed elsewhere, viz. in our disquisitions on the ‘ Causes, Uses, and Organs of Respira- tion.’ ” It is instructive to see here that Harvey’s acquaintance with comparative anatomy led him astray. One would like to know what were the cases which he treated of in his disquisition on the ‘ Causes, Uses, and Organs of Respiration ’ which caused him to come to the above erroneous conclusions. John Hunter’s demonstrations of these receptacles of air in birds are to be found in vol. lxiv (1774) of the Philosophical Transactions, p. 205. Note p, p. 26. Exercise lvii. He goes on to say, “ And this, too, is a remark- able fact, that virtues and vices, marks and moles, and even parti- cular dispositions to disease, are transmitted by parents to their offspring ; and that while some inherit in this way, all do not.” Note q, p. 28. Exercise lxxi. The whole of this exercise is most interesting; in it we see Harvey was evidently in perplexity. His own clear judgment urged him to the conclusion that the blood and innate heat were inseparable. He could not rest contented with the older view that “ spirits ” existed apart from the blood, and that the office of the arteries and heart was to contain them. Harvey quotes Fernelius (Pliysiolocjia, lib. iv, cap. 2) : “ He who has not. yet mastered the matter and the state of the ingenerate heat, let him cast an eye upon the structure of the body, and turn to the
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