Page:The Harveian oration - delivered at the Royal College of Physicians June 24, 1882 - by George Johnson (IA b21517046).pdf/64

 the arteries emptied in a very short time by the efflux from their corresponding arteries."

NOTE e, page 36.

Prof. Ceradini maintains that Cesalpino meant by auctive blood in this passage, blood which had passed through the organs and is returning towards the heart to augment the blood which is there being constantly fabricated, and he accuses Harvey's bio- grapher, in the College edition of his works (p. xx.), of having with bad faith inverted the sense of the passage (pp. 244-5). But it clearly admits of no other interpre- tation. For as, in accordance with Aristotle's doctrine, Cesalpino believed that the veins contained the auctive blood, while the nutrient blood is in the arteries (Quæst. Per.' 117 E), it is evident that the arteries could 'elicit' auctive blood from the veins through the anastomoses, only by a direct current from the veins into the arteries. Cesalpino, in his entire ignorance of the hydraulics of the circulation, could not know that if there were such anastomoses as he supposed between the veins and the arteries, the current of blood must of necessity, in con- sequence of the greater pressure in the arteries, set from them to the veins-as in a case of aneurism by anastomosis.

NOTE f, page 42.

Dr. Ceradini refers to Cesalpino's statement that all the veins swell when obstructed, as conclusive proof that he had actually seen the effect of obstructing all