Harvey had no appreciation of how
the arteries and veins communicated with each other. Galen, you may
remember, recognized that there were anastomoses, but Harvey preferred
the idea of filtration.
The "De Motu Cordis" constitutes a unique piece of work in the history
of medicine. Nothing of the same type had appeared before. It is
a thoroughly sensible, scientific study of a definite problem, the
solution of which was arrived at through the combination of accurate
observation and ingenious experiment. Much misunderstanding has arisen
in connection with Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood.
He did not discover that the blood moved,--that was known to Aristotle
and to Galen, from both of whom I have given quotations which indicate
clearly that they knew of its movement,--but at the time of Harvey not a
single anatomist had escaped from the domination of Galen's views.
Both Servetus and Colombo knew of the pulmonary circulation, which was
described by the former in very accurate terms. Cesalpinus, a great
name in anatomy and botany, for whom is claimed the discovery of the
circulation, only expressed the accepted doctrines in the following
oft-quoted phrase:
"We will now consider how the attraction of aliment and the process
of nutrition takes place in plants; for in animals we see the aliment
brought through the veins to the heart, as to a laboratory of innate
heat, and, after receiving there its final perfection, distributed
through the arteries to the body at large, by the agency of the spirits
produced from this same aliment in the heart.
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