An anatomical disquisition on the motion of the heart & blood in animals / by William Harvey ; translated from the Latin by Robert Willis.

  • William Harvey
Date:
[1906]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An anatomical disquisition on the motion of the heart & blood in animals / by William Harvey ; translated from the Latin by Robert Willis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    in the veins : that the blood and spirits constitute one body (like whey and butter in milk, or heat [and water] in hot water), with which the arteries are charged, and for the distribution of which from the heart they are provided, and that this body is nothing else than blood. But if this blood be said to be drawn from the heart into the arteries by the diastole of these vessels, it is then assumed that the arteries by their distension are filled with blood, and not with the ambient air, as here- tofore ; for if they be said also to become filled with air from the ambient atmosphere, how and when, I ask, can they receive blood from the heart? If it be answered : during the systole; I say, that seems im- possible ; the arteries would then have to fill whilst they contracted ; in other words, to fill, and yet not become distended. But if it be said: during the diastole, they would then, and for two opposite pur- poses, be receiving both blood and air, and heat and cold; which is improbable. Further, when it is affirmed that the diastole of the heart and arteries is simultaneous, and the systole of the two is also concurrent, there is another incongruity. For how can two bodies mutually connected, which are simulta- neously distended, attract or draw anything from one another; or, being simultaneously contracted, receive anything from each other? And then, it seems im- possible that one body can thus attract another body into itself, so as to become distended, seeing that to be distended is to be passive, unless, in the manner of a sponge, previously compressed by an external force, whilst it is returning to its natural state. But it is difficult to conceive that there can be anything of this kind in the arteries. The arteries dilate, because they are filled like bladders or leathern bottles; they are not filled because they expand like bellows. This I think easy of demonstration; and indeed conceive that I have already proved it. Nevertheless, in that book of Galen headed Quod Sanguis continetur in Arteriis, he quotes
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