ccording to him, there appeared, as the first rudiment
of the embryo, the heart, or _punctum saliens_, together with the
blood-vessels. He was clearly of opinion that the embryo arose by
successive formation of parts out of the homogeneous and nearly liquid
mass. This was the doctrine of epigenesis, which, notwithstanding its
temporary overthrow by the erroneous theory of evolution,[20] is, with
modifications, the doctrine now held.

Of Harvey's scholarship and culture we are not left in ignorance. Bishop
Pearson, writing about seven years after the doctor's death, and
Aubrey[21] have told us of his appreciation of the works of Aristotle,
and in his own writings he refers more frequently to the Stagirite than
to any other individual. Sir William Temple[22] has also put it on
record that the famous Dr. Harvey was a great admirer of Virgil, whose
works were frequently in his hands. His store of individual knowledge
must have been great; and he seems never to have flagged in his anxiety
to learn more. He made himself master of Oughtred's "Clavis Mathematica"
in his old age, according to Aubrey, who found him "perusing it and
working problems not long before he dyed."

Nor should it be forgotten that this illustrious physiologist and
scholar was also the first English comparative anatomist. Of his
knowledge of the lower animals he makes frequent use, and he says (in
his work on the heart), "Had anatomists only been as conversant with the
dissection of the lower animals as they are with that of the human body,
many matters that have hitherto kept them in a perplexity of doubt,
would, in my opinion, have met them freed from every kind of
difficulty." Aubrey says that Harvey often told him "that of all the
losses he sustained, no grief was so crucifying to him as the loss of
his papers (containing notes of his dissections of the frog, toad, and
other animals), which, together with his goods in his lodgings at
Whitehall, were plundered at the beginning of the rebellion."

FOOTNOTES:

[20] According to the theory of evolution, the egg contained from the
first an excessively minute, but complete animal, and the changes which
took place during incubation consisted not in a formation of parts, but
in a growth, _i.e._ in an expansion of the already existing embryo (see
p. 40).

[21] See p. lxxxii. of "Life," by Dr. Willis.

[22] "Miscellanies:" Part II. on Poetry, p. 314.

INDEX.

Albertus Magnus, 65

Alexand