Some years ago I was led to make a study of the Life and Writings of Spinoza, and took considerable pains to present the gifted Jew of Amsterdam in such fulness to the English reader as might suffice to convey a passable idea of what one of the great misunderstood and misused among the sons of men was in himself, in his influence on his more immediate friends and surroundings through his presence, and on the world for all time through all his works. This study completed, and leisure from the more active duties of professional life enlarging with increasing years, I bethought me of some other among the sufferers in the holy cause of human progress as means of occupation and improvement. Spinoza led, I might say as matter of course, to Giordano Bruno, with whose writings I was familiar, and who was Spinoza's master, if he ever had a master. But having, at a former period, undertaken x to edit the works of Harvey for the Sydenham Society, and the discovery of the circulation of the blood having become renewed matter of discussion with medical men and others, labourers in the field of general literature, I was turned from Bruno to Servetus, as the first who proclaimed the true way in which the blood from the right reaches the left chambers of the heart by passing through the lungs, and who even hinted at its further course by the arteries to the body at large. Of Servetus at this time I knew little or nothing, save that he had been burned as a heretic at Geneva by Calvin; and of his works I had seen no more than the extract in which he describes the pulmonary circulation. But meditating a revision and prospective publication of the Life of Harvey, with which I had prefaced my edition of his works, I went in search of further information concerning the ingenious anatomist who had not only outstripped his contemporaries, but his successors, by something like a century in making so important an induction as the Pulmonary Circulation. Nor had I far to go.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... APPENDIX. An account of the extant copies of the 'Christianismi Restitutio;' of the reprints of the work by Dr. de Murr and Dr. Mead, and of the notices the work has received in earlier and later times. The ' Christianismi Restitutio' of Michael Servetus is one of the rarest books in the world. Of the thousand copies known to have been printed, two only are now known to survive; one of these being among the treasures of the National Library of Paris, the other among those of the Imperial and Royal Library of Vienna. The history of both of these copies, curiously enough, is complete from rather a remote date, and it is somewhat provoking to know that both of them were once in this country; but bigotry sent the one, and want of religious sympathy, presumably, suffered the other to leave our shores. The Paris copy certainly belonged to Dr. Richard Mead, the distinguished physician and medallist, who lived in the reign of Queen Anne, and is believed, before it came into Mead's possession, to have formed part of the Library of the Landgrave of Kur-Hesse. How it got dissevered from this is not known. It was probably stolen and brought to England as to a sure market. Mead, liberal in politics and presumably in religion also, appears to have felt so much interest in Servetus' work, not only by reason of the physiological matter it contained, but because of the free spirit of inquiry it breathed, that he was minded to have it reprinted and made generally accessible. He had accordingly got halfway with a new and handsome edition of the work in 410. form, so far back as the year 1723, when his purpose reached the ears of Gibson, the then Bishop of London. Alarmed at the idea of light being let in on the world that had not been strained through the...

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Servetus and Calvin is a book by Robert Willis. It presents a study of 16th century heretics and false beliefs, during an important epoch in the history of the Reformation.