Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The pulse / by W.H. Broadbent. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
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![which it is not easy to identifj ; while the Pulsus myouros appears to be one in which the respn-atory variations of pressure are recognisable by the tinger. Galen, whose writings dominated the entire art ot medicine for fourteen centuries, was bom in aj3_. 161 at Pergamos, and went to Rome in 164. His in- dustry was extraordinary, and besides remarkable intellectual faculties, he must have possessed great force of character and much enthusiasm. He estab- lished the facts that the arteries did not contam air, but blood, and that there was no communication between them and the trachea, as had been taken for granted. He showed also that there must be some communication between the arteries and veins at their ultimate distribution, since, on bleeding an animal to death from an artery, the veins as well as the arteries were found to have been drained of blood. He sup- posed, however, that blood traversed the intra- ventricular septum from the right to the left side of the heart, and he considered the diastole of the heart and the pulsatile distension of the arteries to be corresponding phenomena, and to constitute the active phase of their action. The left ventricle, according to Galen, attracted the blood vitalised by the pneuma, which had entered it in the lungs, as a magnet attracts iron, and then distributed it by the aorta, the arteries again drawing it in by dilating. He wrote voluminously on the pulse, as will be seen liy an enumeration of his works on this subject: 1. Lil)olliis du Pulsihiis ;id Tirones. 2. Libri Qaatuov do Pulsmim Difforcntiis. ?i. Libri Q,i'n,tiior dc ]^ul.sibus Dignosccndis. 4. Libri Qnatuor di5 C.ausis Pulsuum. 5. Libri Qu.atuor d<! PrnosHg'itionc ox Pulsibns.'' G. Synopsis Soxdeeim Librovtnn de Pulsibus. 7. Pulsuum Compondiuni. The general elFect of his writings, however, is to](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21966692_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
