Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/79

 LETTERS. 597

come forth, I send to you), I have not had leisure to produce it. And now I rather rejoice in the silence, as from your supple- ment I perceive that it has led you to come forward with your excellent reflections, to the common advantage of the world of letters. For I see that in your most ornate book (I speak without flattery), you have skilfully ' and nervously confuted all his machinations against the circulation, and successfully thrown down the scaffolding of his more recent opinions. I am, therefore, but little solicitous about labouring at any ulterior answer. Many things might, indeed, be adduced in confirmation of the truth, and several calculated to shed clearer light on the art of medicine ; but of these we shall perhaps see further by and by.

Meantime, as Riolanus uses his utmost efforts to oppose the passage of the blood into the left ventricle through the lungs, and brings it all hither through the septum, and so vaunts himself on having upset the very foundations of the Harveian circulation (although I have nowhere assumed such a basis for my doctrine; for there is a circulation in many red-blooded animals that have no lungs), it may be well here to relate an experiment which I lately tried in the presence of several of my colleagues, and from the cogency of which there is no means of escape for him. Having tied the pulmonary artery, the pulmonary veins, and the aorta, in the body of a man who had been hanged, and then opened the left ventricle of the heart, we passed a tube through the vena cava into the right ventricle of the heart, and having, at the same time, attached an ox's bladder to the tube, in the same way as a clyster-bag is usually made., we filled it nearly full of warm water, and forcibly injected the fluid into the heart, so that the greater part of a pound of water was thrown into the right auricle and ventricle. The result was, that the right ventricle and auricle were enormously distended, but not a drop of water or of blood made its escape through the orifice in the left ventricle. The ligatures having been undone, the same tube was passed into the pulmonary artery, and a tight ligature having been put round it to prevent any reflux into the right ventricle, the water in the bladder was now pushed towards the lungs, upon which a torrent of the fluid, mixed with a quantity of blood, immediately gushed forth from the

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