Introduction: exercises and declamations

Harvey's task in presenting his case in print was to convince his readers. We can assume that he adopted what he thought was the most appropriate style of presentation to achieve this. The Harvey who had given much thought to presenting his discovery of the forceful systole with the utmost rigour, obsignatis tabulis, to the audience at his anatomy lectures in the college, would be unlikely to be more casual in announcing it, together with the discovery of the circulation, to the whole learned world in a printed work. He succeeded in the task of persuading his readers to the extent that by the end of his life the circulation of the blood (at least) was generally admitted. There was a consensus.

In beginning to write De motu cordis Harvey was not in a strong position. He wanted to tell the world that he had discovered the true actio and utilitas of the heart. As a modern, he did not possess the authority of the ancients, whose opinions, indeed, he was trying to overturn. Although discussions of ‘action and use’ were recognised parts of ‘anatomy’, Harvey's task was not the simpler one of some of his anatomical predecessors of announcing a new discovery in morphology. But he shared their disadvantage of not being able to ‘demonstrate’ the discovery in a proper logical way ‘so that it could not be otherwise’. The ‘physical logic’ available to anatomists was indeed even weaker in attempting to demonstrate function than it was in showing structure.