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COINED THE PHRASE CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD . First edition, and a fine copy in a contemporary binding, of Cesalpino s very rare work which coined the phrase "circulation of the blood" (circulatio sanguinis, f. 111v) and provided the theoretical basis for Harvey s experimental and quantitative treatment in De motu cordis (1628). "Cesalpino preceded Harvey in the discovery of the concept of the circulation, and Harvey must have known of his ideas" (Garrison-Morton). "Cesalpino s most important medical studies concern the anatomy and physiology of the movement of the blood. He gave a good description of the cardiac valves and of the pulmonary vessels connected to the heart, as well as of the minor blood circulation; he also recognized that the heart is the center of the circulation of the blood and accepted the existence of the traditional synanastomoses of the arteries with the veins. He did not, however, discover the major circulation (first demonstrated in 1628 by William Harvey)" (DSB). "No-one who reads Cesalpino impartially can deny the eminent part that he played in the discovery of the circulation of the blood" (Castiglioni, p. 438). Bound with the Cesalpino is the rare first edition of Patrizi s Discussionum Peripateticarum, a critical examination of the life and works of Aristotle. ABPC/RBH lists only three other copies in contemporary bindings sold at auction in the last 60 years: Norman copy, Christie s New York, March 18, 1998, lot 61, $36,800 ("title page stained at edges and with removed stamp"); Swann, May 24, 2001, lot 50, $33,350 ("wormholes through front cover & blank outer margin of opening leaves, title page stamped"); Friedman copy, Sotheby s New York, November 16, 2001, lot 29, $110,000 ("repaired tear to title page, spine head repaired, C4,5 guarded"). In their description of the Friedman copy, Sotheby s noted that "the only copy to surface at Anglo-American auctions in the past century was that of Haskell F. Norman." No copies of the Patrizi in auction records. "In Quaestio IIII (ff. 107-112) of his Peripatetic problems, Cesalpino first made the critical point, repeated in his later works, that blood flows in a perpetual movement into the heart from the veins and from the heart to the arteries. This statement, as Pagel has noted, marked "a breakaway from Galen and a stepping-stone for Harvey" (p. 171); Cesalpino "replaced [Galen's doctrine] by the more sophisticated idea of arterio-venous plexuses in which the blood is conveyed to the organs by the arteries, although part of it comes from the veins. With this Cesalpinus seems to have taken a progressive step in the direction of the truth however far this is still removed from Harvey s idea of the closed arterio-venous circle" (p. 187). "Cesalpino examined contemporary medical and anatomical research in the light of Aristotelian rather than Galenic philosophy (the "Peripatetic" in this work s title alludes to Aristotle s Peripatetic school). His theory of the circulatio sanguinis as a rhythmic to-and-fro movement was based on the Aristotelian model of hot evaporating matter driven upward and then returning to its source after cooling; it emphasized both the continuity and circularity of the cardiovascular system and its essentially automatic, repeating character. Harvey used the same Aristotelian model in De motu cordis as a student at the Aristotelian University of Padua, Harvey could hardly have escaped noticing Cesalpino s work, which was very popular with students in Italy and Germany" (Norman). "In 1571, Andrea Cesalpino (1524 1603), with whose medical works Harvey must have also been acquainted, published Peripateticarum Quaestionum Libri Quinque, a systematic book on the basis of the Aristotelian philosophical framework. In it, he described quite accurately the heart valves and the pulmonary vessels connected to the heart, as well as the pulmonary circulation. Although Cesalpino had not attained a thorough knowledge, founded on anatomical rese.
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