34 Motion of the 



imbued with heat and spirit. And indeed a circum- 

 stance of the same kind is extremely manifest in the 

 course of the generation of animals, as may be seen in 

 the course of the first seven days of the incubation 

 of the chick:: A drop of blood makes its appearance 

 which palpitates, as Aristotle had already observed ; 

 from this, when the growth is further advanced and 

 the chick is fashioned, the auricles of the heart are 

 formed, which pulsating henceforth give constant signs 

 of life. When at length, and after the lapse of a few 

 days, the outline of the body begins to be distinguished, 

 then is the ventricular part of the heart also produced ; 

 -but it continues for a time white and apparently blood- 

 less, like the rest of the animal ; neither does it pulsate 

 or give signs of motion. I have seen a similar condition 

 of the heart in the human foetus about the beginning 

 of the third month, the heart being then whitish and 

 bloodless, although its auricles contained a considerable 

 quantity of ipurple blood. In the same way in the egg, 

 when the chick was formed and had increased in size, 

 the heart too increased and acquired ventricles, which 

 then began to receive and to transmit blood. 



And this leads me to remark, that he who inquires 

 very particularly into this matter will not conclude that 

 the heart, as a whole, is the primum vivens, ultimum 

 moriens the first part to live, the last to die, but 

 rather its auricles, or the part which corresponds to the 

 auricles in serpents, fishes, &c., which both lives before 

 the heart- 1 and dies after it. 



Nay, has not the blood itself or spirit an obscure 

 palpitation inherent in it, which it has even appeared 

 to me to retain after death ? and it seems very ques- 

 tionable whether or not we are to say that life begins 

 with the palpitation or beating of the heart. The 

 seminal fluid of all animals the prolific spirit, as 

 Aristotle observed, leaves their body with a bound 



1 [The reader will observe that Harvey, when he speaks of the heart, 

 always means the ventricles or ventricular portion of the organ.] 



