Doctrine once sown strikes deeply its root, and
respect for antiquity influences all men. Still the die is cast, and my
trust is in my love of truth, and the candour of cultivated minds."(28)
Then he goes on to say:
(28) William Harvey: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et
Sanguinis in Animalibus, Francofurti, 1628, G. Moreton's
facsimile reprint and translation, Canterbury, 1894, p. 48.
"I began to think whether there might not be A MOVEMENT, AS IT WERE, IN
A CIRCLE. Now this I afterwards found to be true; and I finally saw that
the blood, forced by the action of the left ventricle into the arteries,
was distributed to the body at large, and its several parts, in the same
manner as it is sent through the lungs, impelled by the right ventricle
into the pulmonary artery, and that it then passed through the veins and
along the vena cava, and so round to the left ventricle in the manner
already indicated."(29)
(29) Ibid. p. 49.
The experiments dealing with the transmission of blood in the veins
are very accurate, and he uses the old experiment that Fabricius had
employed to show the valves, to demonstrate that the blood in the veins
flows towards the heart. For the first time a proper explanation of the
action of the valves is given.
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