William Harvey : a history of the discovery of the circulation of the blood / by R. Willis ; with a portrait of Harvey, after Faithorne.
- Date:
- 1878
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.
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.
146/406 page 126
![extinguished by the quantity of aliment flowing in upon it.”1 What the precise meaning of the above may be is, perhaps, questionable ; but such language consorts in nowise with the conception of a continuous motion of the blood—alternately venous and arterial—in a circle throughout the body; and every modern physiologist knows that imperfection of the valvular apparatus of the heart makes such a thing impossible. What prac- tical physician in these days would listen to the man who should maintain that imperfect action of the valves of the heart was a beneficent arrangement of nature ? Csesalpinus’s total misunderstanding of the action of the heart might seem of itself to strip him of every title that has been advanced for him as having divined the circulation of the blood. “We are not compelled,” he says, “ to have the valves of the educing vessels [the pulmonary artery and aorta] close with the dilatation of the heart; for it does not dilate that it may attract ; neither is there any danger of regurgitation from the arteries to the heart; for the motion takes place from the veins to the heart, the heat attracting the aliment, and, at the same time, from the heart to the arteries, the same motion opening both orders of orifices—those of the veins 1 “ Jure igitur arteriae magnae ostium adversus motum spiritus in cor clauditur, ne ejus copia suffocetur calor. Venae autem ostium adversus motum ex corde obsistit, ne cordis flamma copia alimenti extinguatur.” (O. P., lib. v. p. 123^.)](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21996404_0148.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
