Harvey's Views on the Use of the Circulation of the BloodCurtis, John Green
History
Harvey's Views on the Use of the Circulation of the Blood
Curtis, John Green
Blood -- Circulation; Harvey, William, 1578-1657
Galen believed that the heat of animals is safeguarded also by the
entrance of cooling air through the pores of the skin into the
arterial system, and by the exit through these pores of injurious
fumes out of the arteries.[38] In the introduction to Harvey's great
treatise of 1628[39] the English physician riddles with adverse
arguments this doctrine of Galen; to this we shall return later, as
we shall to Galen's belief that the brain draws cooling air directly
into its ventricles out of the nares through the cribriform plate of
the ethmoid bone.[40]
In passing from Aristotle to Galen we have crossed nearly five
centuries. Now let us pass at a leap across fourteen centuries
more, from Galen at imperial Rome under Septimius Severus to Harvey
at London under King James the First. Having briefly scanned the
doctrines of the Greeks, let us take up our study of respiration
in Harvey's private lecture notes of 1616. His crabbed handwriting
has been deciphered by experts, and his notes have been both
photographed and printed. If we seek therein for his thoughts about
respiration, and track them through the jungle of abbreviated
careless Latin and racy English in which they were jotted down, we
shall find them Galenic in part, but also denying a truth which
Galen had accepted. Harvey's notes are often too disconnected for
quotation, calling rather for paraphrase or summary; and to make
either is a task which one cannot approach without diffidence,
especially as this task involves translation also. Of what I have
ventured to prepare to represent parts of Harvey's note-book in the
present paper some passages are simple translations, such English
words as Harvey interspersed being transcribed. Naturally such
passages are included between quotation marks. These are not used,
however, in the case of a paraphrase or summary, even if it contains
scattered English words which are Harvey's own.
Harvey fully shared the ancient view of the supreme importance
of the heat of animals. In his note-book he, like Galen, deals
with respiration under the heads: first, of a possible absorption
of some of the substance of the air; and, second, of cooling and
ventilation. Let us first take up the second head. Harvey says:--
"Without nourishment life cannot be, nor nourishment without
concoction, nor concoction without heat, nor heat without
ventilation;" for heat perishes either of wasting or of
smothering; "so there is cooling and ventilation of the native
heat, ventilation especially."[41]
His words contain reminders of Aristotle;[24] and he continues about
respiration in a vein as ancient as Hippocrates,[42] as follows:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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