ood; and thirdly, he
was the first person who took a just view of the nature of the pulse.
These are the three great contributions which he made to the science of
physiology; and I shall not err in saying--I speak in the presence of
distinguished physiologists, but I am perfectly certain that they will
endorse what I say--that upon that foundation the whole of our knowledge
of the human body, with the exception of the motor apparatus and the
sense organs, has been gradually built up, and that upon that foundation
the whole rests. And not only does scientific physiology rest upon
it, but everything like scientific medicine also rests upon it. As
you know--I hope it is now a matter of popular knowledge--it is the
foundation of all rational speculation about morbid processes; it is
the only key to the rational interpretation of that commonest of
all indications of disease, the state of the pulse; so that, both
theoretically and practically, this discovery, this demonstration of
Harvey's, has had an effect which is absolutely incalculable, and the
consequences of which will accumulate from age to age until they result
in a complete body of physiological science.

(FIGURE 5.--The junction of the arteries and veins by capillary tubes,
discovered by Malpighi (A.D. 1664).)

I regret that I am unable to pursue this subject much further; but there
is one point I should mention. In Harvey's time, the microscope was
hardly invented. It is quite true that in some of his embryological
researches he speaks of having made use of a hand glass; but that
was the most that he seems to have known anything about, or that was
accessible to him at that day. And so it came about, that, although he
examined the course of the blood in many of the lower animals--watched
the pulsation of the heart in shrimps, and animals of that kind--he
never could put the final coping-stone on his edifice. He did not know
to the day of his death, although quite clear about the fact that
the arteries and the veins do communicate, how it is that they
communicate--how it was that the blood of the arteries passed into the
veins. One is grieved to think that the grand old man should have gone
down to his tomb without the vast satisfaction it would have given to
him to see what the Italian naturalist Malpighi showed only seven years
later, in 1664, when he demonstrated, in a living frog, the actual
passage of the blood from the ultimate ramifications of the arteries