The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other EssaysPark, Roswell
Religion
The Evil Eye, Thanatology, and Other Essays
Park, Roswell
Bruno, Giordano, 1548-1600; Evil eye; Knights of Malta; Medicine; Mythology; Religion; Students
Thirdly, he enquires why, when one notes the resemblance between the
passages and vessels connected with the opposite sides of the heart,
one should regard one side as destined to a private purpose, namely,
that of nourishing the lungs, the other to a more public function?
Furthermore, he enquires, since the lungs are so near, and in continual
movement, and the vessels supplying them of such dimensions, what can
be the use of the pulse of the right ventricle, which he had often
observed in the course of his experiments? He sums up his inability
to accept the explanations previously offered with a phrase which
reads rather strangely, even in original Latin: "Deus bone! Quomodo
tricuspides impediunt aëris egressum, non sanguinis." i. e., "Good God!
how should the mitral valves prevent the regurgitation of air and not
of blood?"
He then takes up the views of those who have believed that the blood
oozed through the septum of the heart from the right to the left side
by certain secret pores, and to them he replied "By Hercules, no such
pores can be demonstrated, nor, in fact, do any such exist." Again,
"Besides, if the blood could permeate the substance of the septum,
or could be emptied from the ventricles, what use were there for the
coronary artery and vein, branches of which proceed to the septum
itself, to supply it with nourishment?"
Further on in the treatise Harvey sets forth his motives for writing,
stating how greatly unsettled had become his mind in that he did not
know what he himself should conclude nor what to believe from others.
He says: "I was not surprised that Laurentius should have written that
the movements of the heart were as perplexing as the flux and reflux
of Euripus had appeared to Aristotle." He apologizes for the crime,
as some of his friends considered it, that he should dare to depart
from the precepts and opinions of all anatomists. He acknowledged
that he took the step all the more willingly, seeing that Fabricius,
who had accurately and learnedly delineated almost every one of the
several parts of animals in a special work, had left the heart entirely
untouched.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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