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WILLIAM HARVEY's MESSAGE to INDIA: Mcrobert

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WILLIAM HARVEY's MESSAGE to INDIA: Mcrobert For many years Harvey laboured in London, practising his profession successfully, lecturing at the College and above all devoting his spare time to carrying out a prodigious number of experiments. After about ten years of carefully conducted experimentation on the bodies of men and upon those of many different species of animals, Harvey began to teach his revolutionary doctrines at the College in 1616, but it was not until 1628, when he was absolutely certain that he had eliminated all sources of error and had considered all the criticisms of his colleagues in the College, that he gave the world his masterpiece, commonly spoken of as Dc Motu Cordis. After its publication he continued his experimental work which led to his producing a remarkable book on the generation of animals. In this hook Harvey first formulated the now generally accepted doctrine wiixiam hahvey's message to i-ndia. of epigenesis or development of the body by a process of differentiation from a simple germ. That eminent (Being an Address delivered to University College zoologist, the late Professor Huxley, was of opinion Medical Society, Rangoon, 1928). that Harvey's work in this connexion was of even greater importance than his better known work on the By G. R. McROBERT, m.d., m.r.c.p., circulation of the blood. Harvey died in 1657 in his major, I.M.S., eightieth year. Having briefly outlined his career I now turn to his University. Professor of Physiology, Rangoon accomplishments. What do we mean exactly when we Three hundred years ago, in 1628, there appeared say that Harvey discovered the circulation of the from a printing press in Frankfurt, Germany, a small blood ? book written in Latin by an English physician and Before Harvey's time all the facts later known by destined to be hailed throughout the world in later him concerning the structure of the heart and blood- years as the foundation of physiology and of all vessels had already been discovered, and indeed more scientific medicine. than one writer had stated his belief that blood passed The book to which I refer was Exercitatio Ana- from the right side of the heart through the lungs tfviica dc Motu Cordis ct Sanguinis in Animalibus, and thence to the left side of the heart, but no experi- Anatomical Disquisition on the Motion of the mental proof of this had been offered. Although ?nd Blood in Animals) and its author was anatomists had managed to discover all the important } illiam Harvey, a fellow of and lecturer in the Royal facts concerning the structure of the heart and blood of Physicians, and a member of the medical vessels their ideas with regard to how they worked staff~?jlege of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. were totally wrong. To anyone who knows of the very ? great and so well recognised has been the in- high standard of professional skill of Vesalius and uence of Harvey's work on the subsequent develop- Fabricius it is amazing that they remained in ignorance ment of biological science in general and of medical of these matters and a most important object lesson is ;Clence in particular, that during the past few months to be drawn from this. crcentenary celebrations have been held on a magni- At that time and for many centuries before, medical cent scale by the leading scientific and academic thought and teaching were entirely dominated by the all over the civilized world, notably in England, writings of one man?Galen of Pergamum, who had p?uiesrance and America. In England, indeed, the celebra- lived in the second century of the Christian era. The arra"Sed ky the Royal College of Physicians works of this man came to be regarded as canonical, h the co-operation of the universities of Oxford criticism of the contained in them was as ?f .views regarded Cambridge were attended by distinguished medical blasphemy, and even when some of the descrip- J^utatives ?f nearly every country and state in the tions of the structure of the body contained in the l?- V>*he delegates being received by His Majesty the books of Galen were shown by dissection to be in- who laid emphasis in his address on accurate there was a strong tendency to ignore facts n , international character of science, which knows and to cling to the doctrines of the Master. Accord- oundaries of race or of nation. ing to Galen the blood, after concoction in the liver, tiin?6 rtor^ Harvey's life has been related many flowed to and fro in the arteries and veins independently ^ate and cven ^e lay newspapers have devoted after the manner of the ebb and flow of the tides. coi/vi rable ne(J space to biographical details. It is un- He supposed that there was an important connexion hnv/Sary. therefore for me to do more than give a between the right and left sides of the heart by means outline of life. of g Harvey's invisible pores and that spirits of three kinds? b;s ?rn..at Folkestone, Kent, in 1578, Harvey received natural, animal and vital?were added in different parts at of the and education Canterbury Grammar School body. ,ier lie \Vent s.ubseque_ntly proceeded to Cambridge, where Harvey broke away from the usual subservience_ to -? residence in Caius College. After taking his the views of Galen. His series of cWr 111 long physiological Italy Cf ^r^s' Harvey proceeded to Padua in North experiments were so admirably conducted and so sities Vhe stud-v ?f medicine, as the English univer- clearly recorded that they may be said even now to be ?f V? those days made provision for the granting a perfect example of how biological research should courses of tioti i degrees, but not for the instruc- be carried out. Harvey found that one, and only one, t0 ? UP thcm" state of affairs could all his At th explain satisfactorily Pfosner'f1 t'me Padua was in the very hey-day of its experimental results, namely that the heart must be ??a flocked to it from all over Europe the prime mover of the that it must pump the sn I8"1* PUP^S blood, of Ann'3 a*traction being the presence of Fabricius same blood over and over again, that the blood leaving a,1atornla^en('Cn^?' a worthy successor in the chair of the right side of the heart must pass through the lungs ? into blood which modern celebrated Vesalius, the father of the left side of the heart, and that the scicntific anatomical After for leaves the left side of the heart of the arteries five Vo study. studying by way reeemviarSL at ^achia Harvey returned to England, must eventually find its way into the veins and come from the University of back to the right side ot the heart once more, having ^mbrid r degree he oht^e'iand subsequently settled in London where a motion as it tc'ere in a circle. a of Physician ^ec*urership in the Royal College Now when we consider that Harvey had no com- pound microscope at his disposal, that he therefore 226 THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE. [April, 1929. could not see the minute blood vessels which connect The whole of the Ayurvedic system of medicine is the ends of the arterial branchings to those of the founded on the Tri-Dosha pathology according to veins, and when we dwell on the fact that at that which all disease is the result of the disorder of one time oxygen had not been discovered and that there- or more of the three attributes of living matter?wind, fore respiration was a function unknown, we must water and bile. Ayurvedists' conceptions of the nature marvel at the extremely high standard of excellence of disease have not advanced during the past thousand of Harvey's experiments and at his powers of reason- years, although the claim is made that all modern ing which led him to his conclusions. No person scientific knowledge is to be found in ancient Sanscrit claiming to have received an education in science should documents if only they could be translated properly. fail to read an English translation of Harvey's book; The ease with which exact Sanscrit equivalents are it can be read through in an evening. It records in a found for every new term introduced to cope with simple and easily understood fashion one of the first modern scientific advance, such as hormone, vitamin, and most important attempts to wrest knowledge from sympathetic system and vagotonia, makes one wonder nature by means of careful experiment. Using ex- if similar equivalents cannot also be found for such perimental data Harvey showed that the actual quantity terms as sparking plug, thermionic valve and cathode of blood leaving the heart at each beat, at the velocity ray, to bolster up the claims for the omniscience of the at which he computed it must attain, could only arise ancient Hindus in every branch of human knowledge. from blood flowing back from the veins into the heart Like Harvey one would say I do not think it right from a common circulating stock?this observation con- or proper to take from the Ancients any honour that stituting one of the first applications of the idea is their due, and I would be the last person to de- of measurement to a biological investigation. tract from the achievements of the Ancients who, with Having, inevitably, no conception of the function of the limited means at their disposal, seem to have respiration Harvey was, of course, unaible to give a accomplished marvels.
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