An inquiry into the claims of Doctor William Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of the blood : with a more equitable retrospect of that event : to which is added, an introductory lecture, delivered on the third of November 1829, in vindication of Hippocrates from sundry charges of ignorance preferred against him by the late Professor Rush / by John Redman Coxe.

  • Coxe, John Redman, 1773-1864.
Date:
1834
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the claims of Doctor William Harvey to the discovery of the circulation of the blood : with a more equitable retrospect of that event : to which is added, an introductory lecture, delivered on the third of November 1829, in vindication of Hippocrates from sundry charges of ignorance preferred against him by the late Professor Rush / by John Redman Coxe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    his friend Dr. Ent, in his Apologia pro Circulatione Sanguinis, printed in 1641, or 13 years after Harvey's treatise first appear* ed, have we any thing beyond assumption on his part, when he goes beyond the text of Harvey, and co-operates with him in all his invectives ?—What if he has shown Primrose, Parisanus and others, to be wrong, and even to have outraged Harvey in their observations on his works; this by no means proves that Harvey was correct in all his assumptions, and to be sustained at all hazards, as the sole discoverer of the circulation. If we look into the edition of Harvey's works, by the London college of 176G, we shall find therein an enumeration of between three and four hundred variations, of all descriptions, between it, assumed as the most perfect, and the first, printed by Harvey at Frankfort, in 1628. But the circumstance of Harvey being himself the editor, renders it essential to inquire into its merits, and not those of the college edition, at nearly an interval of a century and a half, when such numerous additions had been made in science. In reading the following remarks, this cir- cumstance should be kept in view; and the question perpetually asked, at every position assumed by Harvey, or any asserted fact or demonstration; whether they were or not, known to others, previously to his publication ? If acknowledged to have been known, what exclusive claim can he lay to them ?—or, how can those, individually acknowledged to have been advanced by others, become the right of Harvey, because he may have col- lected them into a focus ? In comparing the strictures of the college edition, in the pre- fixed life of Harvey, with those of Senac in his treatise on the heart, on the opponents or predecessors of the Harveyan doc- trines, we shall find them nearly the same; and differing but little from those of his earliest advocates. The claims of Harvey, awarded to him in his life-time, appear to have been so fully conceded, that scarcely has any inquiry into their correctness been since attempted. Assertions and conjectures, often un- proved and unsupported, and sometimes contradictory, take the place of facts; and a chain has been riveted on free investigation, by tradition chiefly, which has continued unbroken to the present day.