The accuracy and
vividness of Harvey's description of the motion of the heart have been
appreciated by generations of physiologists. Having grasped this first
essential fact, that the heart was an organ for the propulsion of blood,
he takes up in Chapters VI and VII the question of the conveyance of the
blood from the right side of the heart to the left. Galen had already
insisted that some blood passed from the right ventricle to the
lungs--enough for their nutrition; but Harvey points out, with Colombo,
that from the arrangement of the valves there could be no other view
than that with each impulse of the heart blood passes from the right
ventricle to the lungs and so to the left side of the heart. How
it passed through the lungs was a problem: probably by a continuous
transudation. In Chapters VIII and IX he deals with the amount of blood
passing through the heart from the veins to the arteries. Let me quote
here what he says, as it is of cardinal import:
"But what remains to be said upon the quantity and source of the blood
which thus passes, is of a character so novel and unheard of that I not
only fear injury to myself from the envy of a few, but I tremble lest
I have mankind at large for my enemies, so much doth wont and custom
become a second nature.
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