1. THE medical art affords striking instances of the injustice done to the ancients, in endeavouring to deprive them of the glory of having made the most important discoveries in it. I shall- produce two or three manifest proofs of’ this, dud doubt not but the reader will perceive not only probable hints, but demonstrate evidence, that the ancients clearly taught what we now dispute their having had any knowledge of.

2. It is remarkable with regard to medicine, that none of the siences sooner arrived at perfection; for in the space of two thousand years, elapsed since the time of hippocrates, there has scarcely been added a new aphorism to those of that great man, notwithstanding all the application of so many ingenious men, as have since studied that science.

3. I omit taking notice of some modern authors, who have endeavoured to prove, that the circulation of the blood was known to Solomon, that I may pass tc the more evident proofs of his discovery, which Hippocrates furnishes us with. After examining those passages, no one will deny but this able physician knew, what he expresses so clearly.

4. In truth, it is hard to conceive that he knew nothing of the circulation of the blood, when we hear him say, “That all the veins communicate one with the other, and run into one another: that the veins which spread themselves over the whole body, filling it with spirit, juice and motion, are all of them but branches of one original vein. I protest, I know not, says he, where it begins, or where it ends, for in a circle there is neither beginning nor ending.” A little further he says, “that the heart is the source of the arteries, which carry blood into all parts of the body, communicating to them life and beat; he adds, “that they ire the rivulets which cherish the human body, and convey life to every part of man.” in another part, he says, that the “heart and veins are always in motion.” He comrn pares the course of rivers, which return to their sources in an unaccountable and extraordinary manner, to the circulation of the blood. in apoplexies and such like disorders, which he ascribes to obstructions in the veins, he prescribes bleeding, in order to procure a free motion to the blood and spirits. He says also, “that when the bile enters into the blood, it breaks its consistence, and disorders its regular course. He compares its admirable mechanism to clews of thread, whose filaments overlap each other; and says, that in a body it performs just such a circuit, always terminating where it began."

5.   The next to Hippocrates is Plato, who speaks with clearness of the circulation of the blood; (or from the heart, he says, spring the veins and blood, which with rapidity carries itself into all parts : adding, that when the blood thickens, it flows with more difficulty through the veins. Aristotle too, regards the heart as the origin and fountain of the veins and blood. He says, that from the heart there arise two veins, one on the right, and the other on the left side; and he was the first who called this aorta. He held that the arteries had a communication with the veins, and that they were intimately connected together.

6.   Julius Pollox, in his “Onomasticon,” describing all the parts of the body, and their uses, among other things, says, in speaking of the arteries, that they are “the passages and canals of the spirits, as the veins are of the blood ;“ and in speaking of’ the heart, he says, that it: “hath two cavities, the one of which communicates with the arteries the other with the veins.” Apulelus, in explaining the doctrine -of-Plato, speaks likewise of the circulation of the blood, and in a few words describes it as clearly as any of the moderns. It is true, he does not expressly mention, that the blood flows from the heart through- the arteries : but on its leaving the heart, he supposes its course along the lungs, to spread itself afterward into all parts of the body.

7.   Nemesius, bishop of Emissa, who may be accounted among the ancients, having lived in the fourth century, has a very clear passage to this purpose, wherein he says, “that the motion of the pulse owes: its origin to the heart, and particularly to the left ventricle of that viscus. The cardiac artery expands and contracts itself with very much force, but always with great regularity and harmony of motion. In its expansion it draws in the most subtle parts of the blood from the adjoining veins, and of that blood forms the aliment of the vital spirits : and in its contraction exhales all the fumes brought into it by secret passages from all parts of the body.”

8.  It appears from what we have said, that the circulation of the blood was known to the ancients ; though they did not expatiate upon it: and what reduces to a very small degree the honour that Hervey can claim, in making that discovery, is that Servetus had treated of it very distinctly before him, in the fifth part of his book De Christianismi Restitutione ;“ a work so very scarce, that there are but few who can boast of having seen it in print. Mr. Wotton, in his reflections upon the ancients and moderns, cites this passage of Servetus in which he distinguishes three sorts of spirits of the human body, and says, that blood. “which he calls a vital spirit is dispersed through the body by the anastomosis, or mutual insertion of two vessels, at their extremities, into one another.” Where it deserves observation, that Servetus is the first who employed that term to express the communication between the veins and arteries. He makes the “expanded- air in the lungs contribute to the formation of blood, which comes to them from the right ventricle of the heart, by the canal of the pulmonary artery. He says, that the blood is there refined and perfected, by the action of the air, which subtilizes it, and blends itself with that vital spirit, which the expanded heart then receives as a fluid pro. per to carry life every where. He maintains, that this conveyance and manner of preparing the blood in the lungs, is evident from the conjunction of the veins with the arteries in this viscus. And be concludes with saying, that the heart having received the blood thus prepare(l by the lungs, sends it forth again by the artery of its left yen. tricle, called the aorta, which distributes it into all parts of the body.” And reas Cesalpinus, who lived likewise in the sixteenth century, hath two passages which completely contain all that we know about the circulation of the blood. “He explains at length how the blood gushing from the right ventricle of the heart through the pulmonary artery, to pass into the lungs, enters by an anastomosis into the pulmonary veins to be conveyed to the left ventricle of the heart, and afterward distributed by the aorta into all parts of the body.”

9.   Johannes Leonicenus, says, that the famous Paul Sarpi, otherwise named Father Paul, was he who discovered the circulation of the blood, and first discerned the valves of the veins, which like the suckers of a pump, open to let the blood pass, but shut to prevent its return; and that he communicated this secret to Fabricius ab Aquapendente, professor of medicine, at Padoua, in the sixteenth century, and successor to Fallopius who discovered it to Hervey, at that time studying physic under him in the university of Padoua.

10.  There is another important discovery in anatomy, attributed to Fallopius, which had a more ancient origin; I mean the two ducts which insert themselves into the sides of the womb, and serve to convey the seed or female sperm from the ovaries into the womb, and are called the Fallopian tubes, being shaped almost like a trumpet, and thought to have been discovered by Fallopius of Modena, who died in year 1562. We find them described as follows, by Rufus of Ephesus, “Herophilus,” says he, “imagined that females had no seminal ves sels; but in examining the womb of a beast, I found -arising from the ovaries certain ducts, which entwisted into each other, were entirely varicious, and at their farther extremity, entered into the cavity of the womb. Upon compressing them, there issued from them a glutinous humour, and I am firmly persuaded they are seminal vessels  of the very same structure with those in males called the vericous arastata.” 

Chapter 2 - Of the Chirurgery of the Ancients

Chapter 2