We have now looked in some detail at the way people reacted to Harvey's doctrines in England and the Low Countries and at some of the mechanisms operating for and against the formation of a consensus of opinion. Comparable stories could be told about the other countries of Europe. In Spain, with one exception, the physicians remained Galenist until well after the middle of the century, and so beyond the timescale covered in this book. We have already glimpsed the Danish reaction. What follows below is a brief examination of how Harvey's doctrines were treated in Italy, France and the Germanic lands.

Harvey's doctrines were, for his opponents, novelties that did not agree with an extant scheme of things and were therefore, they concluded, wrong. It followed for them that Harvey's method of producing these novelties, what we are here calling his natural philosophy, must also have been at fault. It was Primrose's complaint that Harvey took no note of medicine as an autonomous activity: of how the thought of its founders had been bound into an intelligible and trustworthy system of understanding and, importantly, practice, which circulation could only disturb.

Circulation in Italy: Parigiano's attack on Harvey

These sentiments and others that we must consider were developed a few years after Primrose's first attack by another opponent of Harvey, Emilio Parigiano, Latinised as Aemylius Parisanus. Parigiano was a Roman, thought of himself as a philosopher as well as a physician, and practised in Venice.