Harvey's Views on the Use of the Circulation of the BloodCurtis, John Green
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Harvey's Views on the Use of the Circulation of the Blood
Curtis, John Green
Blood -- Circulation; Harvey, William, 1578-1657
"And now it has come to this, that it would seem better worth
while and more straightforward for those who seek the path by
which in man the blood passes through the vena cava into the
left ventricle and the venous artery,[20] to be willing to
search for the truth by dissecting animals, in order to look
for the reason why in the larger and more perfect animals, when
full grown, nature chooses to make the blood percolate through
the parenchyma of the lungs rather than take wide open paths as
in all other animals (it being understood that no other path
and transit can be thought out):--whether it is because the
larger and more perfect animals are hotter and when they are
full grown their heat is more ignited, so to speak, and prone
to be smothered, that there is this permeation and transfer
through the lungs in order that the heat may be tempered by the
inspired air and guarded from boiling up and smothering--or for
some other similar reason. But to determine these matters and
explain them completely were to enter on a speculation as to the
purpose for which the lungs are made. About these and their use
and motion, and the whole subject of ventilation and the need
and use of air, and other matters of this sort, and about the
various different organs created in animals by reason thereof,
although I have made a vast number of observations, I shall not
speak till I can more conveniently set them forth in a treatise
apart, lest by wandering at this point too far from my subject,
which is the motion and use of the heart, I should seem to deal
with something else and leave my position, to confuse and evade
the question."[21]
Farther on in the same treatise Harvey says:--
"Moreover, the reason why the lungs have vessels so ample, both
vein and artery, that the trunk of the venous artery exceeds
in size the crural and jugular branches taken both together;
and the reason why the lungs are so full of blood as we know
them to be by experience and inspection (heeding Aristotle's
warning,[22] and not deceived by the inspection of such lungs as
we have removed from dissected animals from which all the blood
had flowed out)--the reason is, that in the lungs and heart
is the storehouse, the source, the treasury of the blood, the
workshop of its perfection."[23]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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