Suggestions in reference to the means of advancing medical science : being the opening address delivered before the members of the Harveian Society, on November 6th, 1856 / by Francis H. Ramsbotham.

  • Francis Henry Ramsbotham
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Suggestions in reference to the means of advancing medical science : being the opening address delivered before the members of the Harveian Society, on November 6th, 1856 / by Francis H. Ramsbotham. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    circulation of the blood; for, in a passage preserved by Galen, be expresses himself as follows :— The vein arises from the part where the arteries, that are distributed to the whole body, have their origin, and penetrates to the sanguineous [or right] ventricle of the heart, and the artery arises from the part where the veins have their origin, and penetrates to the pneumatic [or left] ventricle of the heart. This description, confused as it is, seems to prove that he believed the venous and arterial systems to be more intimately connected than was at that time generally supposed. Other passages confirm the superiority of his ideas concerning the circulation. The pre- valent doctrine was that the veins arose from the liver, and the arteries from the heart. Whereas he contended that the heart was the origin of both the veins and arteries. With this con- viction in his mind it could only have been his bending to the current notion of the age, which was, that the arteries con- tained air, that prevented his anticipating Harvey's discovery. The sera of the Grecian philosophy, as it was called, whose tenets kept such a firm hold of the Schools for so many centuries, commenced with Thales the Milesian, 480 years before Christ. And from the works ©f Plato, Aristotle, and others, we learn that both Anatomy and Physiology were embraced within the curriculum of this philosophy. As might have been expected, however, the former was most imperfect and erroneous, and the latter was encumbered with all the fanciful speculations that burdened the scholastic learning of those ages. I need only quote one sentence from Plato, to prove to you how crude and unsatisfactory was the Anatomy of the Grecian philosophers. That sublime author says, The heart is the centre or knot of the blood-vessels, the spring or fountain of the blood, which is carried impetuously round; the blood is the pabulum or food of the flesh; and for the purpose of nourishment the body is laid out into canals, like those which are drawn through gardens, that the blood may be conveyed, as from a fountain, to every part of the pervious body. With such ill-defined notions of Anatomy ruling the schools, we must not express astonishment at the mass of absurdities
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