$Ectton of Tbe Ibttorv of Fiebicilne President-Sir STCLAIR THOMSON, M.D
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$ectton of tbe Ibttorv of fIebicilne President-Sir STCLAIR THOMSON, M.D. [Februar?y 7, 1934] William Harvey's Knowledge of Literature-Classical, Mediaval, Renaissance and Contemporary By D. F. FRASER-HARRIS, M.D., D.Sc., F.R.S.E. UNLESS we happen to have considered the subject, we can have no adequate notion of the extent of Harvey's acquaintance with Classical, Renaissance and Contemporary Literature. We are, perhaps, too apt to think of William Harvey as the author of that libellus aureus, the De Motu, and forget that he also wrote the De Generatione, on " Parturition," on the" Uterine Membranes and Humours," and on " Conception," throughout all of which he displayed the most intimate knowledge of the works of many authors who had views on topics of biological interest germane to the matters under discussion,L nor should we forget the lost writings of Harvey *on Medicine, Pathology, Respiration and Insects. Besides the works just mentioned, Harvey composed two "Disquisitions " to -Riolanus, full of references to Galen, and nine letters to contemporaries which have come down to us-one to Caspar Hofmann, of Nuremberg; one to Paul M. Slegel, of Hamburg; three to John Nardi, of Florence; one to R. Morison, of Paris; one to -J. D. Horst, of Hesse-Darmstadt and one to John Vlackveld, of Haarlem. It is in -the letter to Morison that Harvey has so much to say of Pecquet of Dieppe, the discoverer of the Receptaculum Chyli. There seems no room for doubt that Harvey could read in the original the Greek -and Latin authors to whom he refers. Of Greek writers he mentions no fewer than twenty-five ranging from Thales of the seventh century B.C. to Suidas, the reputed author of a Greek lexicon, who iourished about A.D. 975. These authors are-of the seventh century B.C.: Thales; of the sixth: Pythagoras, Alcmaeon of Crotona, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Epicharmus of Syracuse, and Diogenes of Apollonia; of the fifth century: Empedocles, Hippo- -crates, Socrates, Polus, Critias, Plato, Democritus of Abdera, Eudoxus of Cnidus, Euclid of Megara and Erasistratus; of the fourth century: Aristotle, Epicharmus and Menander. The following who wrote in Greek belong to the Christian era: Palladius, Galen, Plutarch and Suidas. Fourteen Latin authors are quoted or referred to by Harvey, namely: Virgil; Varro; Seneca; Terence; M. A. Apicius; the elder Pliny; Lucius Papyrius; Celsus; L. J. M. Columella; Domitius Ulpianus; Quintus Serenus; Florentius; Pipinus and Migaldus. Three names belong to the Middle Ages, two Arabic writers, Avicenna and Averroes and the schoolman, Albertus Magnus. When we come to Renaissance and Contemporary writers, the list is even more imposing. It comprises thirty-two names. Of writers born in the fifteenth century 1 The edition used in this research is, The Works of William Harvey, translated by R. Willis, M.D., London, The Sydenham Society, 1857. JUNEI-IST. OF MED. 1 1096 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 22 we have: Jacobus Sylvius2; Fracastorius; J. C. Scaliger and Andreas Laurentius. Of authors in the sixteenth century there are: Fernelius; Vesalius, Eustachius; Fabricius; Realdus Columbus; J. C. Arantius; Leonardus Botallus; Franciscus Valesius; Caspar Bauhin; Volcherus Coiter; Ulysses Aldrovandus; Descartes; Hollerius; Caesar Cremoninus; Gasparo Aselli; Fortunius Licetus; Spighelius; Thuanus (J. A. de Thou); Gregorius Nymannus; Josephus Aromatorius and Daniel Sennert. Of writers born in the seventeenth century we have: Pecquet of Dieppe; Walaeus. of Leyden: Thomas Bartholinus and Johannes Riolanus; and two authors whose birth dates have not been ascertained, Du Val of Rouen and Aemilius Parisanus of Venice. In the manuscript notes to his Lectures, Harvey refers to eight writers whom he mentions nowhere else: Plautus, Horace, Julius Ccesar, Cicero, Vitruvius, Nicholaus. Massa and Archangelo Piccolhomini. We may summarize the numbers of the authors quoted in Harvey's published and unpublished works thus:- Of Greek authors ... ... ... ... 25 Of Latin authors ... 14 Of Medieval authors ... ... 3 Renaissance and Contemporary ... ... 32 In MSS. of Lectures ... ... ... 8 Total 82 authors. While the great majority of the references in Harvey's writings are to subjects of biological importance, this is not exclusively the case. As early as at the end of the first chapter of the De Motu we have seven lines introduced by, " as the old man in the comedy says." The lines are:- " For never yet hath any one attainea To such perfection, but that time and place And use have brought addition to his knowledge, Or made correction or admonished him, That he was ignorant of much which he Had thought he knew; or led him to reject What he had once esteemed of highest price." These lines are the translation of a speech by a character " Demea " in Act V,. Scene 4 of Terence's play, The Adelphi.3 Demea is an old married man who is contrasting his bachelor brother's care-free existence with his own life of worries. Harvey is known to have been very fond of Virgil; his expression, " Everything if full of Jove" is a reference to " Jovis omnia plena " in Virgil's third Eclogue.. Harvey quotes from Virgil four times in the De Generatione and once in the essay on " Parturition," but in no case is the precise poem cited, although Virgil is named~ on three occasions. Two of the references are to the second book of the Georgics, the first of which (De Generatione, p. 187) is a quotation of eight lines of some translation, and is. prefaced by, " Whence the poet sings" "Earth teems in Spring and craves the genial seed. The almighty father, aether, then descends In fertilizing showers into the lap Of his rejoicing spouse, and mingling there In wide embrace sustains the progeny Innumerable that springs. The pathless woods Then ring with the wild bird's song, and flocks and herds Disport and spend the livelong day in love." 2 In almost every case Harvey uses the Latin, rather than the native, form of thc names o£' Renaissance writers. 3 'This passage was found for me through the kindness of Professor Singer. 23 Section of the History of Medicine 1097 The second quotation from the second Georgic is in the essay on ." Parturition " (p. 543), and here Virgil is named thus-" to use Virgil's expression with reference to the fields:- 'Superat tener omnibus humor Et genitalia semina poscunt.'" These words (which are not translated) occur in lines 331 and 324 of the second book of the Georgics. The third allusion to Virgil is to a passage in the second book of the AEneid (lines 330 and 331) which relates to the west wind (De Generatione, p. 219)-" Varro declares that the mares in Lusitania conceive by the wind. For Zephyrus was held to be a fertilizing wind, whence its name as if it were 'ooq7epoq, or life-bringing. So that Virgil says "And Zephyrus with warming breath resolves The bosom of the ground, and melting rains Are poured o'er all, and every field brings forth." The fourth quotation from Virgil and the third in the De Generatione (p. 282) is in reference to the universality of a vital principle or soul in all living things. In this case Virgil is not named; Harvey remarking, "We exclaim with the poet- "'Tis inmost soul sustains, and mind infused Through every part that actuates the mass." This is from a passage in the sixth book of the AEneid. Harvey's fifth reference to Virgil and the fourth in the De Generatione (p. 507) is the only one in which both the Latin original and a translation are given-(tenth book of the A3neid, line 847)-- " The blood is the living principle of man," says Suidas; and the same thing is true of all animals; an opinion which Virgil seems to have wished to express when he says: " Una eademque via sanguisque animusque sequuntur"; "And by one path the blood and life flowed out." As we might expect in treatises of biological import, Aristotle is the author most often referred to; in fact 269 times in all, 230 times in the De Generatione and 21 times in the De Motu. In thus quoting so much from Aristotle, Harvey was but acting on his own advice, for in a notable conversation with Aubrey he had said: " Go to the fountain head and read Aristotle, Cicero and Avicenna " (a Greek, a Roman and an Arabian). A great deal of the De Generatione is taken up with discussions about the soul and its relation to the blood. On this subject Thales, Diogenes, Heraclitus, Alemaeon and Suidas are all quoted. Anaxagoras and Hippocrates are referred to as believing that the chick arose from the yolk or vitellus but was nourished by the albumin called by Anaxagoras " bird's milk " (Opvt9Oo yaAaX). The following passage from the De Generatione (p. 212) is typical of the kind of aspect under which the ancients viewed this and similar topics: "The vitellus," says Fabricius, " is so called from the word vita because the chick lives upon it; from its colour it is also spoken of as the "yellow" of the egg, having been called by the Greeks generally, XpvUOv; by Hippocrates, XXA)pov; and by Aristotle @Xp°w, and XEKv0ov; the ancients such as Suidas in Menander called it VEOTTOV, i.e. the chick, because they believed the chick to be engendered from this part." This passage is a careless translation of Harvey's Latin so far as the reference to Suidas is concerned-" quod Suidas ex Menandro scribit." Suidas in his Lexicon quoted from the A ndria of Menander a passage whose translation is: " and after this give her the yolk of four eggs." The word yolk, so veorTrov, is the same as the Greeks used for a young bird or nestling.