questions,
gave me instructions, and showed me post-mortem dissections; and to
those who asked him if he believed in my theory, he wisely replied,
"Mrs. Willard is right as far as she goes." He knew that I made no
pretensions to understand the vast variety of medical subjects not
connected with the circulation, and that I never doubted his skill or
disputed his prescriptions. An honest man, and a skilful physician, he
deserved and had my unfailing confidence. And if, by reason of what I
knew, I had prolonged my life, he had the longer kept a good and
faithful patient. Lady-friends, to whom I had sent my work, had
sometimes referred it to their medical advisers; and thus Dr. Hiester,
an eminent physician of Reading, Pa., became a believer. And in the same
way, the eminent Dr. Cartwright, then of Natchez, and President of the
State Medical Association of Mississippi, came to a knowledge of those
principles, which, as we shall hereafter show, he so remarkably
elucidated.

In September, 1846, the _New York Journal of Medicine_, then edited by
Dr. Charles A. Lee, contained a review or critique on my work, which, if
the history of the theory shall hereafter become a matter of special
interest, may, with my reply, contained in the March number of 1847,
furnish any examiner with the full state of the question at that period.

The learned reviewer showed himself acquainted with the subject as it
then stood, and with its history in the past. He held that the heart's
action, "the contractile power of the cardiac walls," is the main spring
or _primum mobile_, from which the circulating force proceeds,
notwithstanding the great discrepancies as to what that force is; and
while he objected to my theory, that it did not show any distinct
measure of force, he said that, while Borelli estimated the contractive
power of the heart at 180,000 pounds, Keill stated it at five ounces,
Sir Charles Bell at 51 pounds, Carpenter at 511/2, and Hales at 50. He
abandoned, however, Harvey's idea that the heart was the only organ of
circulation. He believed that it was assisted by the contractile power
of the arteries, by the movement of the ribs and chest in respiration,
by capillary attraction, muscular contraction in exercise, and several
other forces; one of which, the attraction of the venous blood for the
pulmonary cells, had been recently pointed out by Dr. Draper. The author
did not suppose he was bringing forward any new truths; "but," said