Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/63

Rh and had he said nothing more than we find in single detached sentences or paragraphs of his book, he must have been regarded as having gone a great length in the right direction. The blood, he says, once it has entered the right ventricle from the vena cava, can in no way again get back; for the tricuspid valves are so placed that whilst they give a ready passage to the stream inwards, they effectually oppose its return. The blood continuing to advance from the right ventricle into the vena arteriosa or pulmonary artery, once there cannot flow back upon the ventricle, for it is opposed by the sigmoid valves situate at the root of the vessel. The blood, therefore, agitated and mixed with the air in the lungs, and having thus in some sort acquired the nature of spirit, is carried by the arteria venosa or pulmonary vein into the left ventricle, from whence, being received into the aorta, it is, by the ramifications of this vessel, transmitted to all parts of the body.

This much taken by itself looks very like an exposition of the circulation of the blood as understood at the present time, though we still see that the blood must be made to participate in the nature of spirit before it enters the arteries, and is not the blood which is contained in the veins, and which nourishes the body; but when we go farther and turn to other parts of his writings, we see that Columbus could never have conceived any proper idea of the circulation. For example, he continues, with Galen, to regard the liver as the origin of all the veins. The vena portæ, he says, arising by innumerable roots from the concavity of the liver, proceeds to carry blood from this organ by different branches to the stomach, spleen, and intestines, to the end that it may convey nourishment in the first case, black bile in the second, and in the third serve a double function—viz. supply nourishment to the intestines at once, and by a kind of imbibition, obtain nutritive matter, which is forthwith sent back to the liver for elaboration into blood. The vena cava again, he describes as arising from the convex aspect of the