William Harvey : a history of the discovery of the circulation of the blood / by R. Willis ; with a portrait of Harvey, after Faithorne.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: William Harvey : a history of the discovery of the circulation of the blood / by R. Willis ; with a portrait of Harvey, after Faithorne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    suffered to say that the Sun, with his attendant planets and their satellites, suffices for the cosmical phenomena observed in the system he dominates, so has the physiologist more lately still been allowed to own that the organisms of man and animals in their several estates suffice for the faculties they manifest. None of the natural sciences had in truth such obstacles to contend with, in the shape of metaphy- sical assumptions — from which, indeed, it has not yet entirely escaped—as physiology. When the facts of observation did not tally with these, it was long held imperative either to pass them by unnoticed, to explain them away, or to regard them as effects of misleading sense. Certain agents by which the organism was presumed to be supplemented and dominated, characterized as Spirits or Principles, were imagined ; and, being associated with the more impor- tant organs, the functions of these were believed to be severally evoked by them, much as the hand of the musician elicits music from his instrument. Strangely and illogically too, as it seems, these agents were still thought of as dependent on the organs they actuated —to come into play, they had themselves to be engen- dered. The right ventricle of the heart, with the blood supplied by the liver, produced the Natural Spirit; the left ventricle, with the aid of the lungs, begat the Vital Spirit; and the brain, with the help of the heart, fashioned the Animal Spirit. Thus believed to be of different kinds, the Spirits