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{"id":13686,"date":"2018-02-06T11:00:19","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T16:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=13686"},"modified":"2023-09-25T23:17:26","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T03:17:26","slug":"an-anatomical-essay-on-the-movement-of-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2018\/02\/06\/an-anatomical-essay-on-the-movement-of-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"An Anatomical Essay on the Movement of the Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Jonathan Sawday ~<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Originally published in <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/collections.nlm.nih.gov\/HiddenTreasure\">Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine<\/a>, <em>2011.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><figure id=\"attachment_13689\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13689\" style=\"width: 216px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_086.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"13689\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2018\/02\/06\/an-anatomical-essay-on-the-movement-of-the-heart\/ht_086\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_086.png?fit=865%2C1200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"865,1200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"HT_086\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"<p>Anatomical Exercises of Dr. William Harvey…, London, 1673<\/p>\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_086.png?fit=216%2C300&ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_086.png?fit=738%2C1024&ssl=1\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-13689\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_086.png?resize=216%2C300&ssl=1\" alt=\"A frontispiece drawing of a very botanical looking human circulatory system, on a table with books, vines, and an Asclepius staff [with snake curled around], propped up against a portrait of William Harvey. \" width=\"216\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13689\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/nlmcatalog\/?term=2361117R\">Anatomical Exercises of Dr. William Harvey…<\/a>, London, 1673 <br \/><em>Photo by Arne Svenson<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>William Harvey\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/nlmcatalog\/?term=2361107R\"><em>De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus<\/em><\/a> is the single most famous exercise in medical research to have come down to us from the premodern age. In just seventy-two pages of somewhat cumbersome Latin prose, Harvey (1578\u20131657), the personal physician of King Charles I, dismantled centuries of Galenic medical dogma to present a new image of the body. Drawing on the observation of the still beating hearts of vivisected frogs, fish, dogs, and pigs, together with mathematical calculation and an elegantly simple experiment involving ligatures tied around a human arm, Harvey showed how blood flowed through the arteries and veins via the lungs, propelled by the contractions of the heart in systole. <em>De motu cordis<\/em> thus represented the triumph of the \u201cnew science\u201d of the seventeenth century, a science in which observation and experiment took precedence over classical textual authority, no matter how ancient.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_13688\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-13688\" style=\"width: 271px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_087.png?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"13688\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2018\/02\/06\/an-anatomical-essay-on-the-movement-of-the-heart\/ht_087\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_087.png?fit=1085%2C1200&ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"1085,1200\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}\" data-image-title=\"HT_087\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"<p>In De motu cordis, chap. 13, using a ligature on the<br \/>\narm, Harvey demonstrates how the valves and arteries are<br \/>\ninterconnected, and how the valves in the veins allow blood<br \/>\nto flow back toward the heart.<\/p>\n\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_087.png?fit=271%2C300&ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_087.png?fit=840%2C929&ssl=1\" class=\"wp-image-13688 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_087.png?resize=271%2C300&ssl=1\" alt=\"Drawing four arms showing the locations of veins and arteries.\" width=\"271\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-13688\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Using a ligature on the arm, Harvey demonstrates how the valves and arteries are interconnected, and how the valves in the veins allow blood to flow back toward the heart. <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/nlmcatalog\/?term=2484042R\">De motu cordis…<\/a><\/em>, Leiden, 1737 <br \/><em>Photo by Arne Svenson<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Except that it didn\u2019t quite happen in that way. A conservative by nature, in setting out his ideas on circulation, Harvey was in some respects following well-trodden ground: the view that blood moved through the infamous \u201cinvisible pores\u201d of the septum of the heart (a key element in the Galenic system) had been denied by the Paduan anatomist Realdo Colombo (1516\u201359) in the mid-sixteenth century; the pulmonary transit of the blood had been posited by Arabic authorities in the thirteenth century, and again by the Protestant heretic Michael Servetus (1511?\u201353) some seventy years before <em>De motu cordis<\/em> appeared. In fact, what Harvey believed he was doing was reasserting the primacy of Aristotle\u2019s biological views. As explained in the crucial eighth chapter of <em>De motu cordis<\/em>, Harvey\u2019s own Aristotelian view of the primacy of the heart and of the importance of circular motion rested, in the end, on a metaphorical view of the world, in which Nature (\u201cwho does nothing in vain\u201d) endlessly replicates herself. Blood circulates in the body, Harvey claimed, in much the same way that the planetary bodies move in circles, or that moisture, warmed by the sun, circulates in the atmosphere. The heart was much more than a mere pumping mechanism. Instead, its \u201cfiery heat\u201d represented a \u201cstore of life\u2026the sun of our microcosm.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In restoring the heart to this quasi-mystical primacy Harvey, a Royalist, was also implicitly making a political statement. <em>De motu cordis<\/em> was extravagantly dedicated to King Charles, whom Harvey addressed as \u201cthe sun of his microcosm, the heart of the state.\u201d The function of kings, hearts, and the sun was essentially the same: to spread life and succor (\u201cpower\u2026and grace\u201d) throughout their respective domains. In 1628, the year in which Harvey\u2019s treatise appeared, the king had already embarked upon his disastrous confrontation with Parliament, which would lead to the eleven years of \u201cpersonal rule\u201d in which Charles attempted to govern the macrocosm of the state in much the same way that Harvey believed the heart \u201cruled\u201d the body: in splendid isolation.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.slu.edu\/arts-and-sciences\/english\/faculty\/jonathan-sawday.php\">Jonathan Sawday<\/a> is the Walter J. Ong, SJ, Chair in the Humanities in the Department of English at Saint Louis University. His books include <\/em>The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture<em> and <\/em>Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine<em>. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, of the English Association, and of the Royal Society for the Arts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jonathan Sawday ~ Originally published in Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine, 2011. William Harvey\u2019s De motu cordis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114947422,"featured_media":13710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Heart and Monarch Reign Supreme - From the NLM book Hidden Treasure: An Anatomical Essay on the Movement of the Heart, 1628","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12763,347145303],"tags":[275516,4574267,10832,1043994,1311,4040,1487506,450817],"class_list":["post-13686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-collections","category-rare-books-journals","tag-1600s","tag-american-heart-month","tag-blood","tag-circulatory-system","tag-england","tag-heart","tag-hidden-treasure","tag-human-anatomy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/ht_087_feature.jpg?fit=900%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xcDk-3yK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114947422"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13686"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13715,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13686\/revisions\/13715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |