The Works of William Harvey M.D.: Translated from the Latin with a life of the authorHarvey, William
Science
The Works of William Harvey M.D.: Translated from the Latin with a life of the author
Harvey, William
Blood -- Circulation -- Early works to 1800; Embryology -- Early works to 1800; Physiology -- Early works to 1800
I shall only further add, that they who descant on the calidum innatum
or innate heat, as an instrument of nature available for every purpose,
and who speak of the necessity of heat as the cherisher and retainer in
life of the several parts of the body, who at the same time admit that
this heat cannot exist unless connected with something, and because they
find no substance of anything like commensurate mobility, or which might
keep pace with the rapid influx and reflux of this heat (in affections
of the mind especially), take refuge in spirits as most subtile
substances, possessed of the most penetrating qualities, and highest
mobility--these persons see nothing less than the wonderful and almost
divine character of the natural operations as proceeding from the
instrumentality of this common agent, viz., the calidum innatum; they
farther regard these spirits as of a sublime, lucid, ethereal,
celestial, or divine nature, and the bond of the soul; even as the
vulgar and unlettered, when they do not comprehend the causes of various
effects, refer them to the immediate interposition of the Deity. Whence
they declare that the heat perpetually flowing into the several parts is
in virtue of the influx of spirits through the channels of the arteries;
as if the blood could neither move so swiftly, nor penetrate so
intimately, nor cherish so effectually. And such faith do they put in
this opinion, such lengths are they carried by their belief, that they
deny the contents of the arteries to be blood! And then they proceed
with trivial reasonings to maintain that the arterial blood is of a
peculiar kind, or that the arteries are filled with such aereal spirits,
and not with blood; all the while, in opposition to everything which
Galen has advanced against Erasistratus, both on grounds of experiment
and of reason. But that arterial blood differs in nothing essential from
venous blood has been already sufficiently demonstrated; and our senses
likewise assure us that the blood and spirits do not flow in the
arteries separately and disjoined, but as one body.
We have occasion to observe so often as our hands, feet, or ears have
become stiff and cold, that as they recover again by the warmth that
flows into them, they acquire their natural colour and heat
simultaneously; that the veins which had become small and shrunk, swell
visibly and enlarge, so that when they regain their heat suddenly they
become painful; from which it appears, that that which by its influx
brings heat is the same which causes repletion and colour; now this can
be and is nothing but blood.
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