Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus

Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (Latin, 'An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings'), commonly called De Motu Cordis, is the best-known work of the physician William Harvey, which was first published in 1628 and established the circulation of blood throughout the body. It is a landmark in the history of physiology, with Harvey combining observations, experiments, measurements, and hypotheses in an extraordinary fashion to arrive at his doctrine. His work is a model of its kind and had an immediate and far-reaching influence on Harvey's contemporaries; Thomas Hobbes said that Harvey was the only modern author whose doctrines were taught in his lifetime.^{[citation needed]}

In De motu cordis, Harvey investigated the effect of ligatures on blood flow. The book also argued that blood was pumped around the body in a "double circulation", where after being returned to the heart, it is recirculated in a closed system to the lungs and back to the heart, where it is returned to the main circulation.

Synopsis

This work is a substantial contribution to cardiac physiology, for it introduces into biology the doctrine of circulation of the blood in the seventeenth century. Opposed and obliging work heralding Harvey's discovery go back to the thirteenth century, when the pulmonary circulation and gas exchange was proposed by Ibn

• English translation of the book by Robert Willis at Fordham University
• English translation of the book by Robert Willis as it appeared in the Harvard Classics
• Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis 1628. From Rare Book Room. Scanned first edition.
• Harvey, William; Leake, Chauncey D. (1928). Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus with an English translation and annotation (First ed.). Springfield, Ill. : Thomas.