Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Latin and English Edition)

The short and unpretentious work here presented for the first time in digital format is one of a handful of undoubted classics in the history of Western scientific thought. Its English title is perhaps best rendered as "Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals," where "Exercise" has the sense of a formal academic argument; it is universally known to scholars by the abbreviated form of its Latin title, De Motu Cordis. Because it is brief, exquisitely well argued, and relatively nontechnical, De Motu Cordis is very probably the one and only great classic of Western science written before 1800 that is still widely read today. The publication of De Motu Cordis in 1628 marked the overthrow of a tradition of scientific explanation that had endured for almost 1,500 years, and introduced within the biological sciences a convention based on close observation and direct experimentation. Harvey’s rigorous and convincing logic yielded not only a statement of an epoch-making scientific discovery (the circulation of the blood), but a fascinating study of how an investigator should conduct experimental inquiries, and how to construct a maximally persuasive argument. There is remarkably little that one can point to, even 375 years later, that is factually "wrong." Commentary by Robert G. Frank, Jr., searchable English translation and Latin live text.