Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/86

 (504 LETTERS.

LETTER IV.

In reply to R. Morison, M.D., of Paris.

ILLUSTRIOUS SIR, The reason why your most kind letter has remained up to this time unanswered is simply this, that the book of M. Pecquet, upon which you ask my opinion, did not come into my hands until towards the end of the past month. It stuck by the way, I imagine, with some one, who, either through negligence, or desiring himself to see what was newest, has for so long a time hindered me of the pleasure I have had in the perusal. That you may, therefore, at once and clearly know my opinion of this work, I say that I greatly commend the author for his assiduity in dissection, for his dexterity in contriving new experiments, and for the shrewdness which he still evinces in his remarks upon them. With what labour do we attain to the hidden things of truth when we take the averments of our senses as the guide which God has given us for attaining to a knowledge of his works ; avoiding that specious path on which the eyesight is dazzled with the brilliancy of mere reasoning, and so many are led to wrong conclusions, to probabilities only, and too frequently to sophistical conjectures on things !

I further congratulate myself on his confirmation of my views of the circulation of the blood by such lucid experi- ments and clear reasons. I only wish he had observed that the heart has three kinds of motion, namely, the systole, in which the organ contracts and expels the blood contained in its cavities, and next, a movement, the opposite of the former one, in which the fibres of the heart appropriated to motion are relaxed. Now these two motions inhere in the substance of the heart itself, just as they do in all other muscles. The remaining motion is the diastole, in which the heart is dis- tended by the blood impelled from the auricles into the ven- tricles; and the ventricles, thus replete and distended, are stimulated to contraction, and this motion always precedes the systole, which follows immediately afterwards.

With regard to the lacteal veins discovered by Aselli, and

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