134 Circulation of the Blood 



bite or inoculate their mad humours, or with their dogs' 

 teeth gnaw the bones and foundations of truth. 



Detractors, mummers, and writers defiled with abuse, 

 as I resolved with myself never to read them, satisfied 

 that nothing solid or excellent, nothing but foul terms, 

 was to be expected from them, so have I held them 

 still less worthy of an answer. Let them consume on 

 their own ill nature ; they will scarcely find many well- 

 disposed readers, I imagine, nor does God give that 

 which is most excellent and chiefly to be desired 

 wisdom, to the wicked; let them go on railing, I say, 

 until they are weary, if not ashamed. 



If for the sake of studying the meaner animals you 

 should even enter the bakehouse with Heraclitus, as 

 related in Aristotle, I bid you approach ; for neither 

 are the immortal Gods absent here, and the great and 

 almighty Father is sometimes most visible in His lesser, 

 and to the eye least considerable works. 1 



In my book on the Motion of the Heart and Blood 

 in Animals, I have only adduced those facts from 

 among many other observations, by which either errors 

 were best refuted, or truth was most strongly supported ; 

 I have left many proofs, won by dissection and appreci- 

 able to sense, as redundant and unnecessary ; some of 

 these, however, I now supply in brief terms, for the 

 sake of the studious, and those who have expressed 

 their desire to have them. 



The authority of Galen is of such weight with all, 

 that I have seen several hesitate greatly with that experi- 

 ment before them, in which the artery is tied upon a 

 tube placed within its cavity ; and by which it is pro- 

 posed to prove that the arterial pulse is produced by a 

 power communicated from the heart through the coats 

 of the arteries, and not from the shock of the blood 

 contained within them; and thence, that the arteries 



1 To those who hesitated to visit him in his kiln or bakehouse 

 which some have said should be Innta, rendered a dunghill) Heraclitus 

 addressed the words in the text. Aristotle, who quotes them, has been 

 defending the study of the lower animals. 



