DISCOVERY OF THE BLOOD’S CIRCULATION. 499 
voice has decreed his rightful heritage ; but he did enough 
to command respect as one of the most illustrious expert 
mental philosophers of any age and country. What precisely 
are Harvey’s claims, what those of Fra Paolo Sarpi, 
Caesalpinus, and others, who have been undeservedly raised 
to the position of his rivals, I must leave for consideration 
in a work which I trust will not be much longer delayed. 
I would gladly indulge in lengthy comment on the very 
great merits of Ruini’s work, but I must be satisfied with 
congratulating your profession upon having ranked among 
its members a man so distinguished as he was, and ever must 
be regarded, for the originality of his mind, and pre-eminently 
for its philosophical mould. 
Pardon this sketeh, no one regrets its incompleteness more 
than does 
Your grateful and obliged servant. 
Speaking of the heart’s functions, at page 108 of the second 
book of his f Anatomy of the Horse/* Ruini says: — “The 
function of the ventricles is, of the right one, to dispose of 
the blood that the spirits of life may be generated and the 
lungs nourished ; of the left, to receive this blood, already dis- 
posed, and convert a portion into the spirits which give life, 
and send the remainder with the spirits to all parts of the 
body. In either ventricle are two mouths or foramina; by 
those of the right, the blood enters from the vena cava, and 
goes out by the arterial (pulmonary) vein ; and by those of 
the left ventricle, the blood, with the air prepared in the 
lungs, enters by the venal (pulmonary) artery, and being- 
made all spirituous, and most perfect in the left ventricle, goes, 
guided by the great artery (aorta), to all parts of the body, 
except the lungs, to participate to them (to the parts of the 
body) that heat which life imparts to it. At each of the 
openings of the heart are three little membranes, called by 
the Greeks c Hostioli / some of these open towards the 
interior, others to the exterior ; at the first opening in the 
right ventricle, for the great vein or cava is a slender mem- 
brane which surrounds the orifice all round, and which, 
extending into the ventricle, divides into three parts, each part 
terminating as if in the point of a triangle ; a little above the 
middle of the ventricle, and from each of the points, arise 
certain nervous filaments (he means the tendinous cords), 
which go to insert themselves in the walls of the ventricle 
towards its lower part, on the membrane, or attached to the 
* ‘Anatomia del Cavallo, Infermita e suoi Rimedii,’ del Sig. Carlo Ruini, 
Senator Bolognese, in Yenetia, 1599. 
