Page:The Harveian oration, delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday, June 27th, 1877 (IA b22314623).pdf/11

 It would be as reasonable to infer that Cesalpino had, without a microscope, anticipated the great discovery of the capillaries by Malpighi because he accidentally uses the term "capillamenta" to designate the minute divisions of the vena cava and the aorta, as it is to regard him as the true discoverer of the circulation of the blood. Every- body, as Cesalpino says, knew in his day that the artcries took their origin from the heart, in order that they might distribute the vital spirit through- out the body; and, again, he maintains that a continuous movement is propagated throughout the different parts of the body, because there is a continuous generation of spirit, which, by its in- crcase (amplificatione), is fitted very rapidly to be diffused everywhere.

Cesalpino argues that the heart is manifestly the chief organ of sensation (primum sensorium), because it is associated with every sense of joy or sadness, which are first perceived to exist in the heart. The heart, therefore, is the origin of the 11 crves. And what, he asks, could such a struggle about the heart effect, unless there were a con- tinuous passage from the heart to the instruments of movement, by which a large amount of spirit (spiritus multus) could be conveycd? There is not much in the foregoing passage that we can utilise ; but in the following there is a mixture of truth and error which is more suggestive, although it