degree of medical knowledge. But, unfortunately for this theory, nearly all the plays from which the most striking passages concerning the flow of the blood have been cited, were written prior to that date, and some of them long before. Mr. Hackett seems to think there may have been some intimacy between the poet and the doctor, "long previous to the marriage," and so, that Shakespeare "may have made himself acquainted with every important fact or theory which had transpired in relation to the subject." This is indeed possible; but it would be a more satisfactory explanation of this very special feature in the plays, if it did not require us to carry back his medical studies, at least, to the date of the "King John," and almost make them encroach upon those seven good years already demanded for the study of law, especially in the absence of any positive evidence in his personal history that he had ever looked into a book of law or medicine. But Dr. Bucknill, as well as the American physician who controverted the views of Mr. Hackett, more thoroughly versed in medical science, has successfully made it appear, not merely that the Shakespearian expressions do not imply a knowledge of the circulation of the blood, in the sense of Harvey, but that they are, in truth, in very exact accordance with the doctrines of Galen, Hippocrates, Rabelais, and others, who were, prior to Harvey, “the learned and authentic fellows" in this branch of knowledge, and with whose writings, as we certainly know, Sir Francis Bacon was quite familiar, for he cites and reviews these very authors, together with Aristotle, Celsus, Porta, Cardan, Fabricius, Servetus, Telesius, Paracelsus, and many more: "Parolles. Why, 't is the rarest argument of wonder that hath shot out in our latter times. Bertram. And so 't is. Lafleur. To be relinquished of the artists, Parolles. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus. Harvey's discovery, though supposed to have been made known at the College of Physicians as early as 1615, was first publicly announced in his published work on the subject, in 1619, three years after the death of Shakespeare. The plays from which Mr. Hackett cites his evidences were all written before 1610, and most of them several years earlier. It is quite possible that Bacon, however, may have heard something of Harvey's discovery, or even seen his book, before the publication of the Folio of 1623. So remarkable a fact should have awakened a profound interest in a mind like his; but there is no intimation in any of his writings that he was at all acquainted with this discovery. Nor is it probable that any author would have occasion to alter and adapt his poetical metaphors to the scientific niceties of the latest announcement. Prior to Harvey, and as early as 1553, Michael Servetus of Geneva had discovered the flow of the blood from the right side of the heart, through valves opening towards the lungs, and from thence, through the pulmonary vein, to the left ventricle, whence he supposed it was diffused through the whole body; and Fabricius of Padua had discovered the valves in the veins opening towards the heart. Harvey was his pupil, about the year 1600, and from him learned the fact which first suggested the idea of the general circulation. The most suggestive passage of all those cited from Shakespeare, in proof that he was in possession of the same idea, is that in which the ghost in "Hamlet" is made to say of "the blood of man," "That swift as quicksilver, it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body"; and this appears in the first printed editions of the "Hamlet" (1603 and 1604), that of 1603 reading "posteth' instead of "courses "; but in the language and thought of all these passages, striking resemblances to the ideas, style, and diction of Sir Francis Bacon may be distinctly noted, as in these examples: 1 Craik's Eng. Lit., II. 149. "make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse." Macbeth, Act I. Sc. 5. "Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, Making both it unable for itself, And dispossessing all my other parts Of necessary fitness?" Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 4. "The tide of blood in me Hath proudly flow'd in vanity till now: 2 Henry IV., Act V. Sc. 2. "Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy, thick, King John, Act III. Sc. 3. 'my heart, The fountain from the which my current runs, Much Ado About Nothing, Act IV. Sc. 1. "The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 1. Measure for Measure, Act 1. Sc. 4, 5. "Runs not this speech like iron through your blood?" Much Ado, Act V. Sc. 1. "I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to th' seat o' th' brain; And through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, Whereby they live."- Coriolanus, Act I. Sc. 1. "The second property of your excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood; which, before cold and settled, left the liver white and pale, but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the inwards to the parts extreme - and then the vital commoners and inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain, the heart." — 2 Henry IV., Act IV. Sc. 3. Now, the spring-head, the fountain, and the ebb and flow of the sea, are frequent sources of metaphor, both with Bacon and the plays; as, for instance, this from a letter to the king: "Let your Majesty's grace, in this my desire, stream down upon me, and let it be out of the fountain and spring-head, and 'ex mero motu,' that, living or dying, the print of the goodness of King James may be in my heart." In the "Advancement" (1605), we have the results of Bacon's general survey of the state of medical learning down to his own time, in which he says of the anatomists, that "they inquire not of the diversities of the parts, the secrecies of the passages, and the seats or nestlings of the humours, nor much of the footsteps and impressions of diseases." So, Shakespeare seems to consider the heart as a seat, or court, into which the blood musters, or nestles, as it courses up and down, through the secret accesses and passages, through "the cranks and offices of man,". "The natural gates and alleys of the body." "As to the diversity of parts," he continues, "there is no doubt but the facture or framing of the inward parts is as full of differences as the outward; . . As for the passages and pores, it is true, which was anciently noted, that the more subtle of them appear not in anatomies, because they are short and latent in dead bodies, though they be open and manifest in live; which being supposed, though the inhumanity ofanatomia vivorum' was by Celsus justly reproved, yet in regard of the great use of this observation, the inquiry needed not by him so slightly to have been relinquished altogether":2 "Laf. To be relinquished of the artists Par. So I say; both of Galen and Paracelsus." 1 Letter of July 30, 1624, Works (Philad.) III. 24. So he writes: "I ever liked the Galenists, that deal with good compositions, and not the Paracelsians, that deal with these fine separations."1 Again, he says In preparation of medicines, I do find strange, especially considering how mineral medicines have been extolled, and that they are safer for the outward than inward parts, that no man hath sought to make an imitation by art of natural baths and medicinable fountains"; and again, "while the life-blood of Spain went inward to the heart, the outward limbs and members trembled and could not resist." 2 The play says: "Death, having preyed upon the outward parts, Leaves them insensible." Here we have the same general and vague notions as to the structure of these inward and extreme parts, with a kind of repetition of the favorite words in the "natural baths," "mineral medicines," and "medicinable fountains"; which may also call to mind these lines from the "Othello": "the thought whereof Doth like a poisonous mineral gnaw my inwards." "Blood is stanched," he says again, "by drawing of the He speaks also of "the sudden recess of the spirits," and of "the recess of the blood by sympathy," and says, that "there is a fifth way also in use, to let blood in an adverse part for a revulsion." 3 This goes upon the idea of a flowing outward and a receding inward of the blood, 1 Letter to Cecil, Spedding's Let. and Life, I. 356. 2 Speech, Spedding's Let. and Life, II. 89. 8 Nat. Hist., § § 66. Leg |