Page:The Harveian oration on Harvey in ancient and modern medicine (electronic resource) (IA b20420080).pdf/19

 MODERN MEDICINE 7 cosm,' we cannot but question whether the description would not better suit the brain, which, to quote the physiology of an older poet, some suppose the soul's frail dwelling- house.' That Tennyson meant the heart in a literal and anatomical sense is evident from his speaking in the same passage of dabbling the hand in it. Such expressions as 'warm- hearted,' G cold-hearted, chicken-hearted,' dishearten,' and the like are still common in our talk. Courage, by its etymology, should belong to the heart rather than to the hemi- spheres. We still speak of a man as 'having his heart in the right place,' as if we took our anatomy from a source older than Galen or Aristotle A wise man's heart is at his right hand, but a fool's heart at his left.'¹ Thus, our language is behind our knowledge by hundreds, even by thousands, of years.

Cæsalpinus (1569) was apparently aware that the blood left the heart by the aorta and returned to it by the veins, passing, as he thought, by anastomoses from one set of vessels

1 Ecclesiastes x. 2.