HARVEY'S LIFE AND WORKS

This new biography of William Harvey by an eminent French physician and classical scholar appears appropriately in this tercentenary year of Harvey's death. As Sir Zachary Cope observes in the foreword: " To Harvey's countrymen it should be regarded as a sincere and great compliment that such an enthusiastic biography should now be forthcoming from France." The biography published in Paris in French appears simultaneously with this English version. A word of praise is due to the anonymous English translator and the editor of the book, who seem to have performed their task with competence and wisdom. Only a few misprints have been noted; for instance, " Magendi" for Magendie and "Wilmott" for Sir Wilmot Herringham (footnote on page 177 and index). Dr. Chauvois has spared no pains in this study. Not only has he carefully read the Latin text of Harvey's works and previous biographies, but he has sought aid from the College of Physicians and from English auth6rities on Harvey, especially Lady Moran and Sir Geoffrey Keynes. In addition he has made several visits to England to see the scenes of Harvey's labours-Cambridge, St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Oxford-and has stood beside Harvey's last restingplace in the Harvey Chapel at Hempstead parish church in Essex. The main facts of Harvey's life are well known and are ably set forth here. But Dr. Chauvois is a poet as well as a historian, and from time to time he enlivens the book by speculations as to what Harvey may have thought and done. Chapter I tells of "A Day with William Harvey, London, 1627 "; in Chapter IV is given a charming but purely imaginative account of an Italian country ramble by Harvey after taking his doctor's degree at Padua; and in Chapter V it is suggested that Harvey met Shakespeare somewhere in London, although there are no documents of the time to prove that the two men were acquainted. These excursions into the realm of " what might have been " are unusual in a scientific biography. Dr. Chauvois is in error in surmising (on page 180) that the Harvey family has become extinct. Several members of the family, including some of Eliab Harvey's descendants, are with us at the present day and take a keen interest in their illustrious forebear. The author's brilliant and learned commentary on De Motu Cordis adds to our knowledge of the magnitude of Harvey's discovery. He gives due credit to Servetus, Colombo, and Caesalpinus, but shows that their works on the circulation of the blood in no way detract from Harvey's fame as the discoverer. It will be remembered that Harvey, shortly before his death, told Robert Boyle that it was the existence and position of the valves in the veins that led him to think of the circulation of the blood. Re-examination of the Latin texts impels Dr. Chauvois to suggest that some current interpretations of Harvey's teaching on the circulation, especially as to the heart being its initiator, are seriously at fault. In this connexion he considers that too little attention has been paid to Harvey's two letters of 1649 to Jean Riolan, which represent Harvey's matured judgment on his discovery. Chapter IX gives an illuminating account of the contemporary reception of Harvey's discovery in France. Descartes was one of the first to accept this with some reservation. It is of interest that Louis XIV, having been advised by his surgeon, Dionis, that the Faculty of Medicine had ostracized the new doctrine of the circulation of the blood, decided in 1673 that Dionis should occupy an independent chair of anatomy in the royal Jardin du Roy where the teaching of Harvey should be imparted. T"his led to mention and praise of Harvey's discovery by Moliere, Boileau, and La Fontaine. Only a short space is given in this book to an account of Harvey's De Generatione. Here the author's evaluation is based on the scholarly papers of H. P. Bayon. But De Generatione deserves greater appreciation than it has hitherto received. It reveals Harvey as a pioneer in embryology, a forerunner of Wallace and Darwin, the founder of scientific midwifery, an epidemiologist, one who first showed that contagious and infectious disease spread through the blood, and whose prophetic vision saw even to the threshold of bacteriology. The pillage of Harvey's papers, " the fruits of many years of toil," by the soldiers of the Parliament, and the destruction of his books and manuscripts in the burning of the College of Physicians in the Great Fire of London, have deprived medical science of much further knowledge obtained by Harvey in his busy and industrious life. In the epilogue to this delightful book Dr. Chauvois pays homage to Harvey in a graceful French poem, which is worthy to rank beside the lyrical tributes penned by Cowley, Dryden, and John Collop on Harvey and his discovery.