The Mechanization of the Heart:: Harvey & Descartes (Rochester Studies in Medical History)

269 Pages·2001·0.72 MB·English

by  Thomas Fuchs

The Mechanization of the Heart:
Harvey & Descartes

Thomas Fuchs
Translated by Marjorie Grene

Rochester Studies in Medical History
The Mechanization of the Heart
Rochester Studies in Medical History
Senior Editor: Theodore M. Brown
Professor of History and Preventive Medicine
University of Rochester
The Mechanization of the Heart:
Harvey and Descartes
Thomas Fuchs
Translated from the German by Marjorie Grene
THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER PRESS
Copyright © 2001 Thomas Fuchs
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of
this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, per-
formed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in
any form or by any means, without prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2001
by the University of Rochester Press
The University of Rochester Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer, Inc.
668 Mount Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
and of Boydell & Brewer, Ltd.
P.O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk 1P12 3DF, UK
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fuchs, Thomas, 1958-
[Mechanisierung des Herzen. English]
The mechanization of the heart : Harvey and Descartes / Thomas Fuchs ;
translated from the German by Marjorie Grene.
p.cm. -- (Rochester studies in medical history, ISSN 1526-2715 ; 1)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 1-58046-077-1 (alk. paper)
1. Cardiology--History--17th century. 2. Heart--History--17th century. 3.
Blood--Circulation--History--17th century. 4. Descartes, Rene, 1596-1560.
5. Harvey, William, 1578-1657. I. Title. II. Series.
QP101.4 .F8313 2001
612.1’09’032--dc21
2001048046
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this item is available from the British Library
© Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1992
Designed and typeset by Christine Menendez
Printed in the United States of America
This publication is printed is on acid-free paper.
For my parents

C
ONTENTS
Translator’s Foreword ix
Author’s Foreword xvii
Abbreviations xviii
A. HARVEY AND DESCARTES 1
I. THEME AND BACKGROUND OF THE INVESTIGATION 1
II. SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT 10
B. THE GALENIC PARADIGM AND ITS CRISIS 19
I. FERNEL’S SUMMA OF GALENISM 21
a) Corollary: The Doctrine of the Spirits 22
II. THE CRISIS OF GALENISM 27
C. THE VITAL ASPECT OF THE CIRCULATION: WILLIAM HARVEY 33
I. THE SCIENCE OF THE LIVING
35
II. DE MOTU CORDIS: THE MOTION OF HEART AND BLOOD 43
a) The Motion of the Blood 47
b) The Motion of the Heart 48
1) Basis of the Motion 48
2) Mechanism of the Motion 51
c) The Function of the Circulation 53
1) Blood and Heat 53
2) Tendencies of Harvey’s Physiology 56
d) Conclusion 59
III. DE MOTU LOCALI ANIMALIUM: THE MOVEMENT OF LIVING
THINGS 62
a) Calor and Spiritus 64
b) Muscles and Nerves 66
c) Sensus and Motus in Harvey’s Later Works 69
d) Summary: Polarity and Movement 73
IV. DE GENERATIONE: THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CIRCULATION 75
a) The Early Stages of Ontogenesis 77
b) The Regularities of Development 79
viii
c) The Blood as Principle 83
d) Circulatio and Generatio 86
e) Summary: Cycle and Polarity 89
D. THE MECHANICAL ASPECT OF THE CIRCULATION: DESCARTES
AND HIS FOLLOWERS 115
I. CIRCULATION AND PHYSIOLOGY IN DESCARTES 115
a) Cartesian Science 116
b) The Body without Soul 122
c) The Physiological Mechanisms 126
1) Motion of Blood and Heart 126
2) The Movement of the Spirits 131
d) Conclusion 138
II. THE MOTION OF HEART AND BLOOD AFTER DESCARTES 141
a) Holland 146
1) Henricus Regius 146
2) Cornelis van Hoghelande 148
3) Franciscus Sylvius 150
4) Theodor Craanen 153
5) Cornelis Bontekoe 154
6) Stephen Blancaard 156
b) England 157
1) Early Writers 158
2) Thomas Willis 160
3) Richard Lower 163
4) John Mayow 165
c) Other Writers: The Latency of the Vitalistic Aspect 168
E. VITALISM AND MECHANISM BETWEEN 1700 AND 1850 197
F. A LOOK AHEAD 225
Bibliography 233
Index of Names 243
T ’ F
RANSLATOR S OREWORD
History is always more complicated than it looks at first sight.
In this book, Thomas Fuchs illustrates that thesis with remarkable
clarity. Let me anticipate, with some commentary of my own, the
major moves of the story he has to tell. As the title indicates, he is
first comparing the views of Harvey and Descartes about the heart
and blood, and then tracing the way those opposing views—both
accepting the circulation, but differing on the motion of the heart—
were received,revised,rejected,or renewed in succeeding generations
by medical writers in various parts of Europe.
First then, against the background of the collapse of
Galenism, Fuchs examines Harvey’s approach to cardiac and circula-
tory physiology, not only through the text of the De Motu Cordis, but
through a consideration of all his surviving works, especially the
essays on generation and also the recently published, but not much
discussed, treatise on the local motion of animals. As the discoverer
of the circulation,Harvey is rightly celebrated as the founder of mod-
ern physiology. But is he a “modern”thinker? Yes,he does use quan-
titative arguments at one point in the De Motu Cordis. But, if he is
rejecting Galenic doctrines, he is doing so through a return to
Aristotle—and what could be less modern than that? But that “fact”,
too, is complicated. His teachers in Padua before him, and Harvey
himself, were Aristotelians in that they knew well, admired, and to
some extent accepted the insights offered by Aristotle’s biological
writings. Taking Aristotle—as,indeed,Georges Cuvier was to do two
centuries later—as the founder of comparative anatomy, they were
happy to follow in the footsteps of a great biologist. It should be
noted,however,that that does not mean Harvey was an “Aristotelian”
in the sense in which seventeenth century scholastics were followers
of “the Philosopher.” On the European continent, at least, universi-
ty students had to be trained in the elements of Aristotelian philoso-
phy before they proceeded to the higher discipline of medicine, law,