It was not until April, 1616, that his lectures began.

Chance has preserved to us the notes of this first course; the MS.

is now in the British Museum and was published in facsimile by the college in 1886.( 26) (26) William Harvey: Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis, London, J.& A.Churchill, 1886.
The second day lecture, April 17, was concerned with a description of the organs of the thorax, and after a discussion on the structure and action of the heart come the lines: W.H.constat per fabricam cordis sanguinem per pulmones in Aortam perpetuo transferri, as by two clacks of a water bellows to rayse water constat per ligaturam transitum sanguinis ab arteriis ad venas unde perpetuum sanguinis motum in circulo fieri pulsu cordis.
The illustration will give one an idea of the extraordinarily crabbed hand in which the notes are written, but it is worth while to see the original, for here is the first occasion upon which is laid down in clear and unequivocal words that the blood CIRCULATES.

The lecture gave evidence of a skilled anatomist, well versed in the literature from Aristotle to Fabricius.

In the MS.