Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus

Ed. 1697

William Harvey

In 1628, having returned to England after graduating in Padua in 1602, he published, in Latin, a fundamental book in the history of medicine: Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus, in which he demonstrates, through rigorous experiments, that blood circulates in the human body in a continuous flow, driven by the heart. This discovery represents a true revolution compared with the medicine of the ancient Greeks, such as Galen, but also with Arabic medicine, which attributed a fundamental role in blood circulation to the liver, marking the birth of modern physiology.

The “sun” of this revolution is the heart, understood not only as the center of biological life, but as the engine of a new conception of the human body, now finally observed, analyzed, and understood in the light of the experimental method.

Austoni Collection – MUSME