Top 10 William Harvey Quotes at QuotationFun

Displaying Top 10 Dr. William Harvey quotes

Our Biography page will tell you more about William Dr. Harvey

Everyone admits that the male is the primary efficient cause in generation, as being that in whom the species or form resides, and they further assert that his genitures emitted in coitus causes the egg both to exist and to be fertile. But how the semen of the cock produces the chick from the egg, neither the philosophers nor the physicians of yesterday or today have satisfactorily explained, or solved the problem formulated by Aristotle.

Disputations Touching the Generation of Animals - 1651, translation Gweneth Whitteridge - 1981.

This organ deserves to be styled the starting point of life and the sun of our microcosm just as much as the sun deserves to be styled the heart of the world. For it is by the heart's vigorous beat that the blood is moved, perfected, activated, and protected from injury and coagulation. The heart is the tutelary deity of the body, the basis of life, the source of all things, carrying out its function of nourishing, warming, and activating body as a whole. But we shall more fittingly speak of these matters when we consider the final cause of this kind of movement.

De Motu Cordis - 1628, The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings. Translation Kenneth J. Franklin - 1957.

In attempting to discover how much blood passes from the veins into the arteries I made dissections of living animals, opened up arteries in them, and carried out various other investigations. I also considered the symmetry and size of the ventricles of the heart and of the vessels which enter and leave them (since Nature, who does nothing purposelessly, would not purposelessly have given these vessels such relatively large size). I also recalled the elegant and carefully contrived valves and fibres and other structural artistry of the heart; and many other points. I considered rather often and with care all this evidence, and took correspondingly long trying to assess how much blood was transmitted and in how short a time. I also noted that the juice of the ingested food could not supply this amount without our having the veins, on the one hand, completely emptied and the arteries, on the other hand, brought to bursting through excessive inthrust of blood, unless the blood somehow flowed back again from the arteries into the veins and returned to the right ventricle of the heart. In consequence, I began privately to consider that it had a movement, as it were, in a circle.

De Motu Cordis - 1628, The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings. Translation Kenneth J. Franklin - 1957, Dedication to Doctor Argent, 7.

The animal's heart is the basis of its life, its chief member, the sun of its microcosm; on the heart all its activity depends, from the heart all its liveliness and strength arise. Equally is the king the basis of his kingdoms, the sun of his microcosm, the heart of the state; from him all power arises and all grace stems.

De Motu Cordis - 1628, The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings. Translation Kenneth J. Franklin - 1957, Dedication to the King.

In man, then, let us take the amount that is extruded by the individual beats, and that cannot return into the heart because of the barrier set in its way by the valves, as half an ounce, or three drachms, or at least one drachm. In half an hour the heart makes over a thousand beats; indeed, in some individuals, and on occasion, two, three, or four thousand. If you multiply the drachms per beat by the number of beats you will see that in half an hour either a thousand times three drachms or times two drachms, or five hundred ounces, or other such proportionate quantity of blood has been passed through the heart into the arteries, that is, in all cases blood in greater amount than can be found in the whole of the body. Similarly in the sheep or the dog. Let us take it that one scruple passes in a single contraction of the heart; then in half an hour a thousand scruples, or three and a half pounds of blood, do so. In a body of this size, as I have found in the sheep, there is often not more than four pounds of blood. In the above sort of way, by calculating the amount of blood transmitted [at each heart beat] and by making a count of the beats, let us convince ourselves that the whole amount of the blood mass goes through the heart from the veins to the arteries and similarly makes the pulmonary transit. Even if this may take more than half an hour or an hour or a day for its accomplishment, it does nevertheless show that the beat of the heart is continuously driving through that organ more blood than the ingested food can supply, or all the veins together at any time contain.

De Motu Cordis - 1628, The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings. Translation Kenneth J. Franklin - 1957, Dedication to Doctor Argent, 7.

And so I conclude that blood lives and is nourished of itself and in no way depends on any other part of the body as being prior to it or more excellent... So that from this we may perceive the causes not only of life in general... but also of longer or shorter life, of sleeping and waking, of skill, of strength and so forth.

Disputations Touching the Generation of Animals - 1651, translation Gweneth Whitteridge - 1981.

Nature is nowhere accustomed more openly to display her secret mysteries than in cases where she shows tracings of her workings apart from the beaten paths; nor is there any better way to advance the proper practice of medicine than to give our minds to the discovery of the usual law of nature, by careful investigation of cases of rarer forms of disease.

Letter IX, to John Vlackveld - 24 Apr 1657, in The Circulation of the Blood - 2006.

I profess to learn and to teach anatomy not from books but from dissections, not from the tenets of Philosophers but from the fabric of Nature.

De Motu Cordis - 1628, The Circulation of the Blood and Other Writings. Translation Kenneth J. Franklin - 1957, Dedication to Doctor Argent, 7.

It is, however, an argument of no weight to say that natural bodies are first generated or compounded out of those things into which they are at the last broken down or dissolved.

Disputations Touching the Generation of Animals - 1651, translation Gweneth Whitteridge - 1981.

All out of the egg.

Disputations Touching the Generation of Animals - 1651, translation Gweneth Whitteridge - 1981.

Like or Follow us

Popular Authors

▪ Manzar Ayubi
▪ Vera Lynn
▪ Jean Smith
▪ Nawaz Sharif
▪ Imran Khan
▪ Tariq Aziz
▪ Sabiha Khanum
▪ Sushant Rajput
▪ Wes Unseld

More Authors

Displaying Top 10 Dr. William Harvey quotes

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Like or Follow us

Popular Authors