incompatibility before it was pointed out by Harvey nearly fifty years later.
William Harvey, Who is Universally Acknowledged to be the Real Discoverer of the Circulation of the Blood.—William Harvey was born at Folkstone, England, in 1578, received his academic education at Caius College, Cambridge, and became a doctor of medicine in 1602, at the age of twenty-four. Four or five years before this event he went to Padua, Italy, to study medicine under Fabricius ab Acquapendente, who was considered at that period to be the ablest and most inspiring teacher of anatomy and physiology in Europe. It was from him, it may safely be assumed, that Harvey learned the importance of studying Nature herself, rather than books, when one is desirous of learning her secrets. Equipped with a thorough knowledge of the methods that may best be employed in making studies of this character, Harvey returned to England at the end of his long stay at Padua. He was soon afterward made a member of the College of Physicians of London, and in 1615 was elected to the Chair of Anatomy and Surgery in that institution. Later still, he was appointed one of the physicians of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. He also held for several years the position of Court Physician, first to James the First and then to Charles the First. It was during this period of his professional career that he began working in earnest upon the problem of the circulation of the blood, and he kept steadily at this work throughout a period of several years. Among the manuscripts preserved in the British Museum there is one bearing the date of 1616 which shows that Harvey had already at this time reached conclusions which, in all essential respects, agree with those which appear in his final treatise published in 1628. The title of the latter work is, "Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus" (Frankfort, 1628).
Although, as I have shown above, several of the links in the chain of proofs bearing upon this question of the circulation had already been discovered before Harvey began his researches, he was not willing to accept them as proven facts until he had himself tested them thor-
