Mémoire sur deux écrits intitulés : de Motu Cordis

1876 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-334
Author(s):  
Barthélémy Hauréau
Keyword(s):  
De Motu Cordis

Blood money: Harvey'sDe motu cordis(1628) as an exercise in accounting

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL J. NEUSS
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
Royal Court ◽  
Arterial Blood ◽  
Circulatory Model ◽  
Blood Money ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge ◽  
De Motu Cordis

AbstractWilliam Harvey's famous quantitative argument fromDe motu cordis(1628) about the circulation of blood explained how a small amount of blood could recirculate and nourish the entire body, upending the Galenic conception of the blood's motion. This paper argues that the quantitative argument drew on the calculative and rhetorical skills of merchants, including Harvey's own brothers. Modern translations ofDe motu cordisobscure the language of accountancy that Harvey himself used. Like a merchant accounting for credits and debits, intake and output, goods and moneys, Harvey treated venous and arterial blood as essentially commensurate, quantifiable and fungible. For Harvey, the circulation (and recirculation) of blood was an arithmetical necessity. The development of Harvey's circulatory model followed shifts in the epistemic value of mercantile forms of knowledge, including accounting and arithmetic, also drawing on an Aristotelian language of reciprocity and balance that Harvey shared with mercantile advisers to the royal court. This paper places Harvey's calculations in a previously underappreciated context of economic crisis, whose debates focused largely on questions of circulation.

The Human Heart, from Harvey to Hobbes

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Graham Holderness
Keyword(s):  
Human Heart ◽  
Theology And Literature ◽  
De Motu Cordis

For two millennia the heart was considered to be the seat of intelligence, motion and sensation. Thomas Hobbes’s friend William Harvey revolutionised the understanding of the heart by demonstrating how blood circulates, and correctly identifying the function of the heart as propulsion. Soon after the publication of De Motu Cordis, Descartes redefined the heart as a ‘pump’, and Hobbes as a ‘spring’. In these mechanistic and rationalist systems the heart lost its prestige, and could no longer be considered the source of sensation and emotion. Harvey did not, however, seek to displace the heart from its traditional position in metaphysical anatomy, but by retaining an Aristotelean interest in causes, continued to promote the centrality of the heart in ways that have persisted in philosophy, theology and literature even to the present day. A fresh look at Harvey’s writings will help us to understand why.

DE MOTU CORDIS.

The Lancet ◽  
1926 ◽  
Vol 208 (5371) ◽  
pp. 299
Keyword(s):  
De Motu Cordis

Harvey'sDe Generatione: Its Origins and Relevance to the Theory of Circulation

1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 262-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Webster
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Approach ◽  
De Motu Cordis

De generationewas the last of the three works published by William Harvey during his lifetime. Although this work on generation was most ambitious, being the product of prolonged and detailed researches, it has received relatively little attention from modern writers. It is generally felt that this work, like William Gilbert'sDe mundo, departs significantly from the more pronounced empirical approach to science which characterized Harvey's first publication,De motu cordis. De generationeshows that Harvey regarded reference to teleological and vitalistic principles as necessary for the solution of crucial problems in biology. In this respect he differed from his contemporaries, the iatrochemical and iatromechanical physiologists, whose non-teleological approach seems, at least superficially, to be in sympathy with the modern biological tradition. The structure and content ofDe generationeare so evidently determined by Aristotle's biological writings, that the work is used to illustrate Harvey's failure to emancipate himself from the philosophical encumbrances of antiquity.

Shakespeare's De Motu Cordis

BMJ ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 2 (5513) ◽  
pp. 590-590
Author(s):  
E. S. Stern
Keyword(s):  
De Motu Cordis
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