faithful kneel, the tapers burn, and the
miraculous cures are sought. Normans and
Jacobins, philosophers and wits, have no
doubt had their moments of sway; but, for
every month of their rule Généviève has
reigned a century. The massacres of
September may have retaliated the massacres of
Saint Bartholomew's Day; but, always and
still the Parisians are Généviévians, and
Lutetia is Génévéfa. Books, statues, and
pictures, may embody other names, but she
is in the hearts of the crowds. The spell
which is stronger than all other spells in
the nineteenth century, as in long bygone
centuries, is the incantation of the Saintly
Isis of the Holy Mountain. The blue and
white banner spangled with stars, of the
sainte, still makes thousands of eyes sparkle
in the city of the Seine, and the invocation
still thrills many souls whenever it is heard:

Sancta Genovefa Urbis et Galliae Patrona, ora pro
nobis.

Holy Généviève, patroness of the city and country
of Gaul, pray for us!

THE CIRCULATION.

To arrive at a truth, it is often necessary
to hew the way through a thicket of error;
and one man's labour does not always suffice
to do the work. Sometimes, when the screen
is nearly removed by the efforts of several
successive pioneers, a few remaining tangled
branches will still serve to intercept a clear
view of tlie important fact about to be
revealed. So it was with the discovery of the
circulation of the blood, which Harvey had
the honour of finally inaugurating, though
numerous predecessors had put their hand
to the achievement. The task was spread
over more than a single epoch. Among the
ancients, Galen began by refuting Erasistratus;
whilst in modern times, the student Fagon
risked an audacious act which, at that date,
could only be undertaken by a young man,
and only justified by great success. He
maintained in a thesis the circulation of the blood;
and the old doctors allowed that he defended
this strange paradox with a talent worthy of
a better cause!

Three important errors had to be swept
away, before Harvey could arrive at his grand
conclusion. Erasistratus, the author of the
first, believed that the arteries contained
not blood, but air only. According to his
ideas, we breathe for no other purpose than
to fill the arteries with air. The arteries
were air-channels, whence their name, derived
from two Greek words, signifying to draw air.
The air, drawn in by the lungs, reached them
by the trachea-artery, properly so called; from
the trachea, it passed into the venous artery
(now called the pulmonary vein); from the
venous artery, it passed into the left ventricle,
and from the left ventricle, it (always the
air) passed into the arteries, which carried
it to the members. What we now call the
sanguineous system, or the circulating
system, was then divided into two systems—the
arterial or aërial system, and the venous or
sanguinary system.

But, said Galen, when you open an artery,
blood flows from it. Either, therefore, blood
was contained in it, or has come into it from
some other source. But if it comes from
elsewhere, if the artery contains air alone,
the contained air ought to issue from it
before the blood; which is not the case. There
issues blood, and not a particle of air.
Therefore, the arteries contain blood only.
Galen made another experiment. He
intercepted a portion of an artery between two
ligatures; he then opened the portion
between them, and found nothing but blood.
Again, therefore, the arteries contain blood,
and nothing else.

"But," argued the partisans of Erasistratus,
"if the arteries contain blood, how can
the air which is inspired by the lungs, pass
throughout the whole body?"

"It does not pass throughout it," answered
Galen. "The air drawn in, is sent out again.
It serves the purposes of respiration, by its
temperature, and not by its substance. It
cools the blood, and that is the only use of
respiration."

It is true that this is far from what we
know about respiration at the present day;
it is even contrary to the fact. Instead
of cooling the blood, respiration warms
it, being the only source of animal heat.
Nevertheless, relatively to Erasistratus, who
asserted that the air traversed the arteries in
totality, in mass, in substance, exactly as it
passes down the windpipe; that it was air
which distended the arteries, which made
them beat, which was the cause of the pulse:
Galen's idea was an advance in science, and
such an advance that the whole force of
physiology could not set a step further without
the aid of modern chemistry. Haller still
believed that respiration cooled the blood.
Galen, therefore, demolished error the first;
he was less fortunate with the remaining
two. Still he proved that the arteries
contain no air, but blood only, like the veins. An
entire half of the sanguineous system,
detached from that system by a mere
hypothesis, was restored to it; and as the
circulation is no other than the movement which
incessantly carries the blood from the heart
to the arteries, from the arteries to the veins,
and by means of the veins brings it back to
the heart—the discovery of the circulation of
the blood was impossible, so long as the
arteries were supposed to be filled with air
alone. Until the step which Galeu made,
any other progress was impracticable.

Error the second. The partition, or
diaphragm, which separates the two ventricles
of the heart, is not pierced with holes, minute
or large; there is no passage through it.
How, then, did it happen that Galen believed,
nay, even saw that there was a passage?