Harvey. And I would beg you to note that the word "circulation" is
improperly employed when it is applied to the course of the blood
through the lungs. The blood from the right side of the heart, in
getting to the left side of the heart, only performs a half-circle--it
does not perform a whole circle--it does not return to the place from
whence it started; and hence the discovery of the so-called "pulmonary
circulation" has nothing whatever to do with that greater discovery
which I shall point out to you by-and-by was made by Harvey, and which
is alone really entitled to the name of the circulation of the blood.

If anybody wants to understand what Harvey's great desert really was, I
would suggest to him that he devote himself to a course of reading,
which I cannot promise shall be very entertaining, but which, in this
respect at any rate, will be highly instructive--namely, the works of
the anatomists of the latter part of the 16th century and the beginning
of the 17th century. If anybody will take the trouble to do that which
I have thought it my business to do, he will find that the doctrines
respecting the action of the heart and the motion of the blood which
were taught in every university in Europe, whether in Padua or in Paris,
were essentially those put forward by Galen, 'plus' the discovery of
the pulmonary course of the blood which had been made by Realdus
Columbus. In every chair of anatomy and physiology (which studies were
not then separated) in Europe, it was taught that the blood brought to
the liver by the portal vein, and carried out of the liver to the 'vena
cava' by the hepatic vein, is distributed from the right side of the
heart, through the other veins, to all parts of the body; that the
blood of the arteries takes a like course from the heart towards the
periphery; and that it is there, by means of the 'anastomoses', more or
less mixed up with the venous blood. It so happens, by a curious
chance, that up to the year 1625 there was at Padua, which was Harvey's