AN ANATOMICAL STUDY QN THE 



No less should it be agreed with Aristotle in such 

 questions on the significance of the heart as whether 

 it receives motion and sensation from the brain, or 

 blood from the liver, or whether it is the source of the 

 veins and blood, and so on. Those who try to refute 

 him here overlook or do not understand the signifi- 

 cance of his argument. This is, that it is the first to 

 exist, and contains in itself blood, vitaHty, sensation 

 and motion before the brain or liver are formed, or 

 can be clearly distinguished, or at least before they 

 can assume any function. The heart is fashioned with 

 appropriate structures for motion, as an internal 

 organism, before the body. Being finished first, 

 Nature wished the rest of the body to be made, 

 nourished, preserved, and perfected by it, as its work 

 and home. The heart is like the head of a state, hold- 

 ing supreme power, ruling everywhere.^^ So in the 

 animal body power is entirely dependent on and de- 

 rived from this source and foundation. 



Many points about the arteries further illustrate 

 and confirm this truth. Why doesn't the arteria 

 venosa pulsate, since it is considered an artery? Why 

 may a pulse be felt in the vena arteriosa^^^ Because 



^^ This is the general Aristotelian position. 



^® The arteria venosa is the pulmonary vein, the vena arteriosa the 

 pulmonary artery. 



In the last sentence of this paragraph my Latin lexicon (E. A. 

 Andrews, New York, 1852) permits me to translate impetum literally 

 as pressure, but not impellentis as pumping\ Harvey does not any- 

 where in the treatise use a word which may literally be translated 

 to give the conception of the heart as a pump. Retaining the tradi- 



[128] 



