Volume 1

William Harvey : a history of the discovery of the circulation of the blood / by R. Willis ; With a portrait of Harvey, after Faithorne.

  • Robert Willis
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: William Harvey : a history of the discovery of the circulation of the blood / by R. Willis ; With a portrait of Harvey, after Faithorne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    25/416 page 5
    The liver, then, was the laboratory of the natural blood, having derived the materials for its work from the stomach and intestines. This blood sufficed for ordinary growth; but to acquire vitalizing, and as sometimes said, nutritive properties it had to reach the heart and undergo further elaboration in its chambers. On the right side there was obvious and ready access to the ventricle from the vena cava - and there the blood was believed to be altered and improved to a certain extent—to have something of a xatural spirit imparted to it; but it was not yet sufficiently attenuated and subtilized to be fit recipient or associate of the vital spirit. To attain to such a degree of refinement it must reach the left ventricle ; and this it was presumed to do by permeating the partition between the two ventricles, whereby it became clarified and improved, as is muddy water by filtration through a sponge. This, however, was not yet all. Blood was at best a palpable and gross material; spirit was impalpable and etherial in its nature, nearest akin to air among things cognizable to sense ; and breathing being seen to be even as necessary to life as the blood, the Vital Spirit was presumed to be finally obtained from the inbreathed air commingled with the purified blood. In the Jewish Scriptures, says the writer, “ God breathed into the nostrils of man the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” — Communication between the left ventricle and the
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