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Summary: William Harvey, On the Motion
of the Heart and Blood in
Animals (1628), trad. Robert
Willis.
Source: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/
mod/1628harvey-blood.html
Chapter I: The Author's Motives
For Writing
When I first gave my mind to vivisections, as a
means of discovering the motions and uses of
the heart, and sought to discover these from
actual inspection, and not from the writings of
others, I found the task so truly arduous, so
full of difficulties, that I was almost tempted
to think, with Fracastorius, that the motion of
the heart was only to be comprehended by
God. For I could neither rightly perceive at first
when the systole and when the diastole took
place, nor when and where dilatation and
contraction occurred, by reason of the rapidity
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