VIIL] EKRORS ATTRIBUTED TO ARISTOTLE. 193 



he naturally could not have entertained the faintest 

 conception of the true motion of the blood. But, 

 without attempting to read into Aristotle modern 

 conceptions which never entered his mind, it is only 

 just to observe that his view of what becomes of the 

 air taken into the lungs is by no means worthy of 

 contempt as a gross error. On the contrary, here, as 

 in the case of his anatomy of the heart, what Aristotle 

 asserts is true as far as it goes. Something does actually 

 pass from the air contained in the lungs through the 

 coats of the vessels into the blood, and thence to the 

 heart ; to wit, oxygen. And I think that it speaks very 

 well for ancient Greek science that the investigator of so 

 difficult a physiological problem as that of respiration, 

 should have arrived at a conclusion, the statement of 

 which, after the lapse of more than two thousand 

 years, can be accepted as a thoroughly established 

 scientific truth. 



I trust that the case in favour of removing the 

 statements about the heart, from the list of the " errors 

 of Aristotle" is now clear; and that the evidence 

 proves, on the contrary, that they justify us in forming 

 a very favourable estimate of the oldest anatomical 

 investigations among the Greeks of which any sufficient 

 record remains. 



But is Aristotle to be credited with the merit of 

 having ascertained so much of the truth ? This 

 question will not appear superfluous to those who are 

 acquainted with the extraordinary history of Aristotle's 

 works, or who adopt the conclusion of Aubert and 

 Wimmer, that, of the ten books of the " Historia 



o 



