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Collecable Very Good
Printed on Dutch paper, is limited to 1450 copies for sale in England and America. This copy is number 206.
Bound in full calf, gilt, spine divided into compartments by raised bands, outlined by blind stamped lines; double gilt borders with stars in corners on front and rear boards.
Deckle edges with gilt top edge. Printed decorative bookplate with ink signature of J. Hargreaves Jones on front paste-down.
Published to celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of the first publication of the Latin edition of 1628 in Frankfurt, this English translation of De Motu Cordis collates the editions of 1653 and 1673. The De Circulatione Sanguinis (translated at the same time) in the form of two essays addressed to John Riolan the Younger of the University of Paris, was published simultaneously in Rotterdam and Cambridge in 1649. Together the two works set out Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood throughout the body by the action of the heart. Despite some initial opposition from the prevailing Galenic orthodoxy on the function of the heart and blood vessels, Harvey's principles soon became generally accepted. William Harvey (1578-1657) was born in Folkestone and educated at the King's School, Canterbury, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and the University of Padua, where he was awarded his MD in 1602. He became a licentiate of the College of Physicians in London in 1604 and physician to St Bartholomew's Hospital, 1609-29. Charles I appointed him his physician-in-ordinary in 1639. Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887-1982), surgeon, literary scholar and bibliographer, was a regular editor in the early days of the Nonesuch Press. His expertise in both medicine and literature came together fortuitously in the various studies he made of Harvey, including the standard biography of 1966.