Science Used to Progress Very Slowly

Dr. Harvey tells me that after his book on the circulation of the blood, De Motu Cordis, came out in 1628, his medical practice declined mightily, since the vulgar thought him crack-brained and all the physicians were against him and envied him. Many wrote against him, but after about twenty or thirty years his doctrine was received in all the universities of the world. In his book De Corpore, Mr. Hobbes says that Dr. Harvey is perhaps the only man 'that ever lived to see his own doctrine established in his lifetime.'

–Ruth Scurr, John Aubrey: My Own Life (2015, p. 106)