Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other IllustrationsLocy, William A. (William Albert)
History
Biology and Its Makers: With Portraits and Other Illustrations
Locy, William A. (William Albert)
Biology -- History
Vesalius, in the first edition of his work (1543) expressed doubts
upon the existence of pores in the partition-wall of the heart through
which blood could pass; and in the second edition (1555) of the
_Fabrica_ he became more skeptical. In taking this position he attacked
a fundamental part of the belief of Galen. The careful structural
studies of Vesalius must have led him very near to an understanding
of the connection between arteries and veins. Fig. 11 shows one of
his sketches of the arrangement of arteries and veins. He saw that
the minute terminals of arteries and veins came very close together
in the tissues of the body, but he did not grasp the meaning of the
observation, because his physiology was still that of Galen; Vesalius
continued to believe that the arteries contained blood mixed with
spirits, and the veins crude blood, and his idea of the movement
was that of an ebb and flow. In reference to the anatomy of the
blood-vessels, he goes so far as to say of the portal vein and the
vena cava in the liver that "the extreme ramifications of these veins
inosculate with each other, and in many places appear to unite and be
continuous." All who followed him had the advantage of his drawings
showing the parallel arrangement of arteries and veins, and their close
approach to each other in their minute terminal twigs, but no one
before Harvey fully grasped the idea of the movement of the blood in a
complete circuit.
Servetus, in his work on the Restoration of Christianity (_Restitutio
Christianismi_, 1553), the work for which Calvin accomplished his
burning at the stake, expressed more clearly than Galen had done the
idea of a circuit of blood through the lungs. According to his view,
some of the blood took this course, while he still admits that a part
may exude through the wall of the ventricle from the right to the
left side. This, however, was embodied in a theological treatise, and
had little direct influence in bringing about an altered view of the
circulation. Nevertheless, there is some reason to think that it may
have been the original source of the ideas of the anatomist Columbus,
as the studies into the character of that observer by Michael Foster
seem to indicate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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