HARVEY, WILLIAM. 1578-1657.


Exercitationes anatomicae de motu cordis & sanguinis circulatione. Cum duplici indice capitum & rerum. Accessit dissertatio de corde [by Jacob de Back]. Rotterdam: Arnold Leers, 1654. 2 parts on one volume. 12mo (123 x 74 mm). Engraved title and 2 engraved plates. Contemporary calf, rebacked, old spine laid down. Some minor browning. Provenance: Petri Viuien, (ownership inscription "Chirgurgi" dated 1697 on front pastedown); S. Barbier (early owners name on engraved title). Later edition, but the first to include Harvey's complete writings on his discovery of the circulation, De motu cordis, and De circulatione sanguinis. For this reason, and because it was published during his lifetime, this 1654 edition is arguably the most important one after the first edition of 1628. "De Circulatione Sanguinis was first published with De Motu Cordis in 1654 (no. 8) and as the two works have usually been printed together since that date, their bibliographical history largely overlaps. The two treatises which form De Circulatione Sanguinis have for too long been considered as merely an appendix to De Motu Cordis. They are far more important than that. The First Letter is a direct criticism of Encheridium. It is not a general discussion of the circulation but treats only the points raised by Riolan. The greater part of the Second Letter is a restatement of Harvey's hypothesis concerning the circulation of the blood supported by further experimental proof, and for this reason it is different in character from the first. It is concerned to affirm a truth and prove its validity by arguments drawn from experimental evidence not, as in the case of the First Letter, to deny a falsity. The argument is not as tightly worked out as in De Motu Cordis but weaves around the theme of the movement of the blood in the arteries and veins and its immediate cause and manner. The points discussed are chosen to answer specific criticisms or to refute alternative notions" (Keynes, pp 73-74). Keynes 8; Krivatsy 15333.; Russell 357.