3. Further, when an artery is divided or punctured, the blood is
seen to be forcibly propelled from the wound the moment the left
ventricle contracts; and, again, when the pulmonary artery is
wounded, the blood will be seen spouting forth with violence at
the instant when the right ventricle contracts.
So also in fishes, if the vessel which leads from the heart to
the gills be divided, at the moment when the heart becomes tense
and contracted, at the same moment does the blood flow with force
from the divided vessel.
In the same way, when we see the blood in arteriotomy projected
now to a greater, now to a less distance, and that the greater
jet corresponds to the diastole of the artery and to the time
when the heart contracts and strikes the ribs, and is in its
state of systole, we understand that the blood is expelled by the
same movement.
From these facts it is manifest, in opposition to commonly
received opinions, that the diastole of the arteries corresponds
with the time of the heart's systole; and that the arteries are
filled and distended by the blood forced into them by the
contraction of the ventricles; the arteries, therefore, are
distended, because they are filled like sacs or bladders, and are
not filled because they expand like bellows. It is in virtue of
one and the same cause, therefore, that all the arteries of the
body pulsate, viz., the contraction of the left ventricle; in the
same way as the pulmonary artery pulsates by the contraction of
the right ventricle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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