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 half-way with a new and handsome edition of the work in 4to. 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 haze of Episcopalian orthodoxy, Gibson addressed himself immediately to the Censor of the Press for an injunction; and at his instance and order the impression, so far as it had gone, was seized, adjudged heretical, and publicly burned. A few copies of the reprint, however, must have escaped the conflagration, of which one is now in the Library of the London Medical Society. This I have had an opportunity of examining, and find that there wanted but little to have completed the most essential part of the work, the last page printed being the first of the chapter entitled ‘De Justitia Regni Christi.’

Disgusted, we may imagine, with the bigotry of Bishop Gibson and his abettors, and, it may be also, to secure his copy of the original against the chance of seizure, confiscation, and the fire, Doctor Mead exchanged it with M. de Boze, Member of the French Academy of the Fine Arts, for a series of medals, of which the Doctor was a known collector. The library of M. de Boze being purchased after his death by M. Boutin, late Intendant of Finance, and the President de Cotte, in common, the Servetus fell to the share of De Cotte, who sold it by-and-by at an exorbitant price, as said, to M. Gaignat, who parted with it in turn for a still larger sum—as much as 3,810 livres—to the Duc de la VailliÈre, the greatest book collector of the age. On the death of De la VailliÈre, and the dispersion of his magnificent library under the hammer, in 1784, the ‘Rest. Christianismi,’ believed at the time to be the only copy in existence, was secured for the sum of 4,120 livres tournois for the BibliothÈque du Roi, and it now remains one of the treasures of the great National Library of France. Much of the above information we gather from the letter of M. l’AbbÉ Rive, Librarian to the Duc de la VailliÈre, which is appended to the London edition of Dutens’ ‘Recherches sur l’origine des DÉcouvertes attribuÉes aux Modernes,’ of the year 1766.

But this is not all, nor even the most interesting of all we know about the Paris copy of the rare and remarkable book. It has the name of ‘Germain Colladon’ on the title-page, and the various passages on which Servetus was finally arraigned and condemned are underscored. It can, therefore, be no other than the copy which belonged to Colladon, the barrister, who prosecuted Servetus at Geneva, and must have been given him along with his brief by the attorney in the case. But the attorney in the case of Servetus was John Calvin; and we need not, therefore, doubt that the underlining is by ‘l’impitoyable Calvin’—the ruthless Calvin, as M. Flourens, who gives so much of the foregoing information as we have not supplemented, characterises the Genevese Reformer. The book shows what M. Flourens supposed to be scorching in one part; and this he gratuitously accounts for, by supposing that it is the copy which was to have been burned along with its author, but was saved in some unaccountable way. That copy, we may be well assured, was reduced to ashes and scattered to the winds with those of its hapless writer; and the presumed scorching, on the careful examination it received from the Rev. Henry Tollin, turns out to be the effect of damp. See Flourens’ ‘Histoire de la DÉcouverte de la Circulation du Sang’ (Paris, 1854), 2nd Ed. Ib. 1857, p. 154.

The Vienna exemplar of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ again, when we first meet with a notice of it, belonged to Markos Szent Ivanayi, a Transylvanian gentleman, resident in London in the year 1665. Szent Ivanayi must, we presume, have held Unitarian principles, and on his return to his native country (in some districts of which Unitarianism is the established or prevailing form of religion), he presented his copy of the ‘Restitutio’ to the Congregation of Claudiopolis, with which he was in communion; and they, at a later date, by the hands of their superior, Stephen Agh, gave it, as the most valuable thing they possessed, to Samuel, Count Teleki de Izek, in acknowledgment of some act of favour from the magnate. The Count, on his part, informed of the rarity of the book, and rightly deeming that it was a gift such as a subject might offer to his sovereign, presented it to the Emperor Joseph the Second of Austria, by whom it was graciously accepted and forthwith enshrined in the great Library of Vienna. This copy of the ‘Restitutio’ is in better condition than that of Paris—‘prÆstat nitiore,’ says Dr. de Murr, from whom we have the foregoing information (De Murr, Chr. Th., M.D., ‘Adnotationes ad Bibliothecas Hallerianas, cum variis ad Scripta Michaelis Serveti pertinentibus.’ 4to. Erlangen. 1805).

The authorities of Roman Catholic Austria, in 1790, more liberally disposed than those of Protestant England in the year of grace 1723, not only gave Dr. de Murr permission to have a transcript made of the ‘Restitutio,’ but raised no objections to his having his copy printed and published—a task which he happily accomplished in 1791, ‘when the work appeared anew, like a Phoenix from its ashes,’ as he says. The reprint is, indeed, an exact counterpart of the original—line for line, page for page being followed throughout; and as the letter and paper have also been chosen to correspond as nearly as possible with those of the prototype, it might have been found difficult to distinguish between the one and the other, were a third copy of the original ever to turn up, had not Dr. de Murr put a mark upon his edition in the date of its publication in extremely small figures—thus, 1791, at the bottom of the last page. This, too, is a scarce book, so we presume the edition was small.

The earliest intimation the world at large received of the existence of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ of Servetus is to be found in Dr. Wm. Wotton’s ‘Reflections upon Learning, Ancient and Modern’ (London, 1694); but his reference is to nothing more than the passage bearing on the way in which the blood from the right side of the heart reaches the left. ‘The passage,’ says Wotton, ‘was communicated to him by his friend Mr. Charles Barnard, a very learned chirurgeon, who had had it transcribed for him by a friend who copied it from Servetus’ book.’ Wotton, therefore, had never seen the book himself. The copy from which the passage was transcribed, in all likelihood was the one which either was at the time or afterwards became the property of Dr. Mead.

The next writer who refers to Servetus and his new views of the pulmonic circulation is Dr. James Douglas, in his ‘BibliographiÆ AnatomicÆ Specimen’ (London, 1715). But neither had Douglas had an opportunity of examining the work for himself. He does no more, in fact, than copy the passage as given by Wotton.

The first member of the medical profession who gave any account of Servetus’ physiological and psychological opinions from an actual survey of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ from De Murr’s reprint, I believe to have been the late Dr. G. Sigmond, an amiable man and accomplished scholar, who has not been very long gone from among us. Sigmond, however, has left us the result of his study in an appreciative Dissertation in Latin and English; the introduction being in our mother tongue, the text in the old language. Sigmond’s work is entitled, ‘The Unnoticed Theories of Servetus; a Dissertation addressed to the Medical Society of Stockholm. 8vo., London, 1826.’ To his great honour, Dr. Sigmond is the first naturalist in these days who dared to see Michael Servetus for what he was in truth: an accomplished and sincerely pious man, but differing, to his sorrow, from both Catholics and Protestants on some of the dogmatical assumptions of their common creeds. The copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ which Dr. Sigmond possessed, as said above, was one of Dr. de Murr’s reprints, which had been bequeathed to him by his friend Dr. James Sims, for many years President of the Medical Society of London, a learned man and lover of books, who believed it to be the original—a belief not shared in by Sigmond, however, though he seems to have known nothing of De Murr or his edition. This copy, I think, must be the one which is now in the Library of the British Museum, purchased in 1855, when Sigmond, having lost the property he inherited from his father, seems to have parted with his books, though he only died in 1873.

The question touching the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood, which will ever make Servetus an object of interest to the medical profession, and had been in abeyance for some considerable time past, has been brought under renewed consideration of late, and busts and statues of several learned and meritorious individuals have been inaugurated to their memory as ‘discoverers of the circulation.’ In the porch of the Instituto Antropologico of Madrid, for example, there is a statue raised by Dr. Velasco to the memory of Michael Servetus on this score, and we have but just heard of a bust set up at Rome to Andrea CÆsalpino on the same ground. So distinguished a physiologist as Dr. Valentin, moreover, has come forward as an advocate of the claims of another and until now unheard of discoverer of ‘the great physiological fact’ in anticipation of Harvey. In his work entitled, ‘Versuch einer physiologischen Pathologie des Herzens,’ Leipzig, 1866, Dr. Valentin will be found saying that ‘it must now be conceded that the pulmonary circulation was known to Servetus in 1553 [and he might have added, to Realdus Columbus in 1559], and both this and the general systemic circulation to Ruini, in 1598. That the pulmonic or lesser circulation—more properly the passage or mode of transference of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart—was known to Servetus and to both Columbus and CÆsalpinus after him, there can be no question; but I have assured myself, from a careful study of the works of these distinguished individuals, that none of them, least of all Ruini [Dell’ Anatomia del Cavallo, Bologna, 1598], was fully or truly informed on the subject. None of them apprehended the circulation of the blood as did Harvey, and as we his followers do in the present day.

It were out of place did I pursue this subject further now; but I hope to take it up anon in a new ‘Life of Harvey,’ long meditated and all but completed, in which I shall show that after all that had been done by those who went before him, there still wanted the combining intellect, the inductive genius of a Harvey to bring light out of darkness, order out of confusion, and to lay the foundations, strong and sure, of our modern physiology and rational medicine by proclaiming the heart the moving power, and the arteries and veins the channels of a continuous, general circulation of the blood.

LONDON: PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

HENRY S. KING & CO.’S PUBLICATIONS.