Prelectiones anatomiae universalis / by William Harvey ; edited with an autotype reproduction of the original by a committee of the Royal College of Physicians of London.

Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Prelectiones anatomiae universalis / by William Harvey ; edited with an autotype reproduction of the original by a committee of the Royal College of Physicians of London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    liver of cirrhosis, and that it sometimes followed the permanent obstruction of a bile duct. The varying appearances of gallstones and the common shape of large renal calculi were well known to him, and he describes pericarditis and its symptoms from his own observation. It is clear that he brought all his powers into the service of his patients, and in this as in every other way deserved the respect of his contemporaries. He uses much that he had heard in talk, as well as the stores of his reading and of his observation, to elucidate his lectures. He quotes Dr. Wilkinson, his predecessor and colleague at St. Bartholomew’s, and Dr. Argent and other fellows of the college of his time, and what he had heard at home and abroad, in Venice, in Padua—no matter from whom so that it illustrated the points of his lecture. To most of these little notes by the way, as to his more important original observations of facts, he appends his initials in the manuscript. The lectures show Harvey to us at his books, seeing his patients in their beds, examining them post mortem, talking with other physicians, listening to the phrases of the people and watching their sports ; and, lastly, they give a picture of him as no carefully prepared work could, delivering his lectures with a body dissected on the table before him, and a demonstrator who lifted up or exposed this part or that, at his bidding. There can be no doubt that the lectures interested their audience. Harvey never tries to appear learned, his whole aim seems to be to make the subject clear; there is no affectation, every remark has the stamp of his own original, thoughtful, observing mind. No method of elucidation is too homely for him ; he often takes the first that strikes him. When he is mentioning the names of the several parts of the intestine, he illustrates the subject by the remark that from St. Paul’s to Leadenhall there is one line of street, but many names as you go along—Cheap, Poultry, and the rest. The arrange- ment of the small intestine is like that of an unset ruff, and he explains the proportions of contiguous organs by a comparison of a kitchen and its appendant washhouse. The parenchyma of a gland surrounds and supports the vessels “ as cotton to keep a jewel; ” an acid taste rising from the stomach into the mouth reminds him of a motion from the lower to the upper house of Parliament. He follows well the rules that he lays down at the beginning for the teaching of anatomy in lectures. They are expressed in a curious mixture of Latin and English, and their general sense may be stated in the following propositions:— i. To show as far as possible the whole of a part of the body at once, so that the relations of the structures may be grasped by the student.