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OF THE HEART. - Hippocrates, The Writings of Hippocrates and Galen [1846]

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The Writings of Hippocrates and Galen. Epitomised from the Original Latin translations, by John Redman Coxe (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1846).

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OF THE HEART.

DE CORDE,FŒSIUS, Treat. ix. p. 268.
DE CORDE,HALLER, ii. p. 35.
TRAITÉ DU CŒUR,GARDEIL, ii. p. 479.

This book, says Haller, is altogether spurious, and this is admitted by Mercurialis. It appears not to have been acknowledged in the time of Galen. Haller says, Fœsius conjoins it with the book “De Carnibus;”—this is not the case. He thinks it ought to be so, and assigns his reasons; but although placed in the same section, no less than four treatises intervene. Haller considers this book, of all the Hippocratic collection, as presenting the greatest anatomical knowledge. It describes the heart, its figure, pericardium, ventricles, their situation and difference of size, its valves, and their appropriate use. A portion of the fluids taken as drink, is asserted as passing by the trachea to the lungs. The maxims of Erasistratus appear to be sustained, for it teaches the non-existence of blood in the arteries. In the account of the ventilation of the blood, by means of the bellows-blowing power of the auricles, absurd as it may possibly be now regarded, we meet with no contradictions; but with a well-constructed edifice, not inferior for the period, than any that has more recently been erected, on a basis considered more firmly established, but which yet may well be doubted. The attentive reader will unquestionably wonder, at finding here so many anatomical details, especially as to the valves of the heart, with a precision not inferior to Harvey, who at least is not entitled to the discovery of this part of the vascular apparatus, nor to the pulmonary circuit of the blood!—Ed.