An anatomical disquisition on the motion of the heart & blood in animalsHarvey, William
Science
An anatomical disquisition on the motion of the heart & blood in animals
Harvey, William
Blood -- Circulation
I shall only further add, that they who descant on the calidum innatum
or innate heat, as an instrument of nature available for every purpose,
and who speak of the necessity of heat as the cherisher and retainer
in life of the several parts of the body, who at the same time
admit that this heat cannot exist unless connected with something,
and because they find no substance of anything like commensurate
mobility, or which might keep pace with the rapid influx and reflux
of this heat (in affections of the mind especially), take refuge in
spirits as most subtile substances, possessed of the most penetrating
qualities, and highest mobility--these persons see nothing less than
the wonderful and almost divine character of the natural operations
as proceeding from the instrumentality of this common agent, viz. the
calidum innatum; they farther regard these spirits as of a sublime,
lucid, ethereal, celestial, or divine nature, and the bond of the soul;
even as the vulgar and unlettered, when they do not comprehend the
causes of various effects, refer them to the immediate interposition
of the Deity. Whence they declare that the heat perpetually flowing
into the several parts is in virtue of the influx of spirits through
the channels of the arteries; as if the blood could neither move so
swiftly, nor penetrate so intimately, nor cherish so effectually. And
such faith do they put in this opinion, such lengths are they carried
by their belief, that they deny the contents of the arteries to be
blood! And then they proceed with trivial reasonings to maintain that
the arterial blood is of a peculiar kind, or that the arteries are
filled with such aereal spirits, and not with blood; all the while, in
opposition to everything which Galen has advanced against Erasistratus,
both on grounds of experiment and of reason. But that arterial blood
differs in nothing essential from venous blood has been already
sufficiently demonstrated; and our senses likewise assure us that the
blood and spirits do not flow in the arteries separately and disjoined,
but as one body.
We have occasion to observe so often as our hands, feet, or ears
have become stiff and cold, that as they recover again by the warmth
that flows into them, they acquire their natural colour and heat
simultaneously; that the veins which had become small and shrunk, swell
visibly and enlarge, so that when they regain their heat suddenly they
become painful; from which it appears, that that which by its influx
brings heat is the same which causes repletion and colour; now this can
be and is nothing but blood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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