The pulsation of the heart and arteries was regarded by
Aristotle as a sort of ebullition in which the liquids were inflated by
the vital or innate heat, the fires of which were cooled by the pneuma
taken in by the lungs and carried to the heart by the pulmonary vessels.
(29) De Generatione Animalium, Oxford translation, Bk. II,
Chap. 6, Works V, 743 a.
In Vol. IV of Gomperz' "Greek Thinkers," you will find an admirable
discussion on Aristotle as an investigator of nature, and those of
you who wish to study his natural history works more closely may do so
easily--in the new translation which is in process of publication by the
Clarendon Press, Oxford. At the end of the chapter "De Respiratione" in
the "Parva Naturalia" (Oxford edition, 1908), we have Aristotle's
attitude towards medicine expressed in a way worthy of a son of the
profession:
"But health and disease also claim the attention of the scientist, and
not merely of the physician, in so far as an account of their causes is
concerned. The extent to which these two differ and investigate diverse
provinces must not escape us, since facts show that their inquiries are,
at least to a certain extent, conterminous. For physicians of culture
and refinement make some mention of natural science, and claim to derive
their principles from it, while the most accomplished investigators
into nature generally push their studies so far as to conclude with an
account of medical principles.
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