Ixii THE LIFE OF HARVEY. 



the blood, we find everything opposed to the likelihood of his 

 having arrived at the same result as Harvey; and, at length, \ve 

 discover that he neither had nor could have had any true 

 knowledge of the circulation. Starting from the Aristotelian 

 doctrines of growth and nutrition (of which so much will be 

 found in Harvey's work on Generation), Csesalpinus held 

 that there were two kinds of blood, one for the growth, 

 another for the nourishment of the body. The blood which 

 went to augment the body, and which he designated alimen- 

 tum auctivum, or aliment of increase, flowed from the liver into 

 the vena cava, which he seems to have thought was connected 

 with the heart only, ut inde virtus omnis a corde descendat 

 that a sufficiency of virtue might be thereby communicated to it. 

 The auctive blood, he farther thought, was attracted into the 

 ventricles of the heart by the inherent heat of the organ. 

 The dilatation of the heart and arteries he imagined to be due 

 to " an effervescence of the spirit ;" and the cause of their 

 " collapse" not systole, be it observed, in the active sense 

 was the appropriation by the parts of the body of the nutritive 

 and augmentative matter. Again, though Csesalpinus speaks of 

 the intercommunication of the minute arteries and veins, he 

 still thought that it was only during sleep that the blood 

 mixed with the spirits passed from the former into the latter 

 class of vessels ; for it is during sleep, he says, that the veins 

 become distended, whilst the pulsations of the arteries are then 

 moderated. He plainly sees no connexion between a delivery 

 by the artery and a filling by the vein. It is along with all 

 this, and as if to settle the question of the kind of knowledge 

 Csesalpinus had of the movement of the blood, that he uses 

 the old word Euripus, to express his idea of its alternating or 

 tide-like motion. 



Csesalpinus, let us add, had no conception of the heart as 

 the efficient cause of any motion which the blood might have. 



