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William Harvey and the primacy of the blood

Pages 239-255 | Received 01 Nov 1985, Published online: 22 Aug 2006

  • Webster , Charles . 1965 . William Harvey's Conception of the Heart as a Pump . Bulletin of the History of Medicine , 39 : 508 – 517 .
  • Pagel , Walter . 1957 . Philosophy of Circles . Journal of the History of Medicine , 12 : 140 – 157 .
  • Harvey , William . 1886 . Prelectiones anatomiae universalis London edited with an autotype reproduction of the original by a committee of the Royal College of Physicians
  • Pagel , Walter . 1967 . William Harvey's Biological Ideas Basel
  • The quotations in this paper are from the first English editions of Harvey's three published works. The page numbers refer to: The Anatomical Exercises of Dr. William Harvey, De Motu Cordis 1628, De Circulatione Sanguinis 1649, The first English text of 1653 Keynes Geoffrey London 1928 and Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures, by William Harvey (1653).
  • Bylebyl , Jerome J. 1973 . The Growth of Harvey's De motu cordis . Bulletin of the History of Medicine , 47 : 427 – 470 .
  • O'Malley , C.D. , Poynter , F.N.L. and Russell , K.F. , eds. 1961 . Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy, by William Harvey, an Annotated Translation of Prelectiones anatomie universalis Berkeley, California
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 11 – 11 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 13 – 13 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 141 – 141 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 126 – 126 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 127 – 127 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 249 – 249 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 249 – 249 . London
  • The relationship between Harvey had Robert Fludd has been analysed from an interesting perspective in Debus Allen G. Harvey and Fludd: The irrational factor in the rational science of the seventeenth century Journal of the History of Biology 1970 3 80 105 Fludd's interest in blood having innate movement is located at a time before 1617.
  • De motu cordis 114 – 114 . chapter 17.
  • De motu cordis 100 – 100 . chapter 16.
  • De motu cordis 28 – 28 . chapter 4.
  • Harvey , William . 1959 . De motu locali animalium Edited by: Whitteridge , Gweneth . London Chapter 14, ‘The Motive Spirit’; ‘Blood and spirit are one thing and so are muscle and motive spirit, wherefore the spirit is nourished in like manner as the body’ (p. 102).
  • De motu cordis 31 – 31 . chapter 4.
  • De motu cordis 31 – 31 . chapter 4.
  • De motu cordis 32 – 32 . chapter 4.
  • De motu cordis 34 – 34 . chapter 4.
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth . 1971 . William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood London
  • Jevons , F.R. 1962 . Harvey's Quantitative Argument . Bulletin of the History of Medicine , 5 : 462 – 467 . The argument that Harvey rejected the addition of spirits to the blood therefore eradicating any distinction between venous and arterial blood also aids the solution to the problem of the arterial pulse. However, Harvey does use the idea of ebullition (as will be discussed below) but this is after the discovery of the circulation and it occurs in the vena cava.
  • Johann Vesling (1598–1649) to William Harvey, 1637, translated by W. R. Le Fanu in Geoffrey Keynes The Life of William Harvey Oxford 1966 270 270
  • 1966 . The Life of William Harvey 270 – 270 . Oxford Fortunio Liceto, professor of philosophy at Padua. The date of this letter is not known.
  • De motu cordis 2 – 2 . The Proeme.
  • De motu cordis 5 – 5 . The Proeme.
  • Whitteridge . 1971 . William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood London Appendix 1.
  • 1847 . The Works of William Harvey, M.D. 595 – 595 . London translated from the Latin by Robert Willis, M.D. Printed for the Sydenham Society
  • 1928 . De motu cordis 152 – 163 . edition.
  • This description in De generatione suggests that the colour changes that took place are not likely to have shaken Harvey's belief that he was observing a humoral separation: ‘But when that soul of the blood fades away, because the native heat goes out, its original substance is forthwith corrupted and dissolved into those parts out of which it was formerly constituted, that is to say, first into gore and afterwards into red and white parts, and the red parts that are uppermost are more brightly coloured and those that are below turn black’ (p. 245). Compare the above with Lower Richard Tractatus de corde item de motu et colore sanguinis et chyli in eum transitu London 1669 translated by Kenneth J. Franklin in R. T. Gunther, Early Science in Oxford, IX (1935), pp. 164–8. He quotes the observation: ‘that this red colour is entirely due to the penetration of particles of air into the blood, is quite clear from the fact that, … when venous blood is received into a vessel, the surface and uppermost part of it takes on this scarlet colour through exposure to the air’ (pp. 168–9).
  • De circulatione sanguinis 153 – 153 .
  • De circulatione sanguinis 156 – 156 .
  • Compare But the philosopher holds rather … but that blood and spirit are one thing … The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis Whitteridge Gweneth London 1964 293 293
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . “ But the philosopher holds rather … but that blood and spirit are one thing … ” . In The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 279 – 279 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . “ But the philosopher holds rather … but that blood and spirit are one thing … ” . In The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 180 – 180 . London
  • Whitteridge , Gweneth , ed. 1964 . “ But the philosopher holds rather … but that blood and spirit are one thing … ” . In The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, Prelectiones anatomie universalis, De musculis 180 – 180 . London
  • Bylebyl . 1973 . The Growth of Harvey's De motu cordis . Bulletin of the History of Medicine , 47 : 427 – 470 .
  • De circulatione sanguinis 187 – 187 .
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 276 – 276 .
  • Harvey , Dilliam . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 282 – 282 .
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 455 – 455 .
  • Leviticus . 1653 . For the life of the flesh is in the blood . On Generation , : 277 – 277 . 17.V.II
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 281 – 281 .
  • Webster , C. 1967 . Harvey's De generatione: Its Origins and Relevance to the Theory of Circulation . British Journal for the History of Science , 3 : 262 – 274 .
  • 1942 . The Embryological Treatise of Heironymous Fabricius ab Aquapendente Ithaca, N.Y. translated by Howard B. Adelmann The introduction to this work gives a good account of the influence on Harvey, especially the use of hens' eggs as an object of research.
  • Fleming , Donald . 1955 . William Harvey and the Pulmonary Circulation . ISIS , 46 : 319 – 327 . This can be seen as an essential part of Harvey's approach because he addresses all his works to the physiology of animals and does not restrict them to human cases.
  • Adelmann , H.B. 1966 . Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology Vol. 5 , II – II . Ithaca, N.Y. pt 2.
  • Galen . 1968 . On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body Vol. 2 , Ithaca, N.Y. translated by Mary Tallmadge-May
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 2 – 2 .
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 514 – 515 .
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 536 – 536 . Harvey accepts the opinion of Julius Caesar Arantius (1530–89) whose De humano foetu (Rome, 1564), first proposed that the umbilical blood vessels did not cross from the mother to the foetus.
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 497 – 497 .
  • Harvey , William . Anatomical Exercitations Concerning the Generation of Living Creatures , the 1653 first English edition 370 – 370 .
  • Pagel , Walter . 1967 . William Harvey's Biological Ideas Basel

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