Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/233

Rh tricuspid valves, is forced into the pulmonary artery, which stands open to receive it, and is immediately distended with it. Once in the pulmonary artery, the blood cannot return, by reason of the sigmoid valves; and then the lungs, alternately expanded and contracted during inspiration and expiration, afford it passage by the proper vessels into the pulmonary veins; from the pulmonary veins, the left auricle, acting equally and synchronously with the right auricle, delivers the blood into the left ventricle; which acting harmoniously with the right ventricle, and all regress being prevented by the mitral valves, the blood is projected into the aorta, and consequently impelled into all the arteries of the body. The arteries, filled by this sudden push, as they cannot discharge themselves so speedily, are distended; they receive a shock, or undergo their diastole. But as this process goes on incessantly, I infer that the arteries both of the lungs and of the body at large, under the influence of such a multitude of strokes of the heart and injections of blood, would finally become so over-gorged and distended, that either any further injection must cease, or the vessels would burst, or the whole blood in the body would accumulate within them, were there not an exit provided for it.

The same reasoning is applicable to the ventricles of the heart: distended by the ceaseless action of the auricles, did they not disburthen themselves by the channels of the arteries, they would by and by become over-gorged, and be fixed and made incapable of all motion. Now this, my conclusion, is true and necessary, if my premises be true; but that these are either true or false, our senses must inform us, not our reason—ocular inspection, not any process of the mind.

I maintain further, that the blood in the veins always and everywhere flows from less to greater branches, and from every part towards the heart; whence I gather that the whole charge which the arteries receive, and which is incessantly thrown into them, is delivered to the veins, and flows back by them to the source whence it came. In this way, indeed, is the circulation of the blood established: by an efflux and reflux from and to the heart; the fluid being forcibly projected into the arterial system, and then absorbed and imbibed from every part by the veins, it returns through these in a continuous stream. That all this is so, sense assures us; and necessary inference from the