BLOOD FLOW IN ARISTOTLE

Abstract

Modern readers view ancient theories of blood flow through the lens of circulation. Since the nineteenth century, scholarly work on the ancient understanding of the vascular system has run the gamut from attempting to prove that an ancient author had in fact, to some extent or another, pre-empted Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood or towards attempting, often with some empathetic embarrassment, to explain the failure on the part of an ancient author to notice something that seems so obvious to the modern eye. Thus C.R.S. Harris's 1973 book The Heart and Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine, which remains the standard on the topic, opens with a sentence in which he marvels at how the otherwise admirable ancient Greek physicians could have ‘failed entirely to arrive at any conception of the circulation of the blood’. This modern vantage point has had an unfortunate effect. In the case of Aristotle in particular, understanding of his cardiovascular system has been diminished by a tendency to define it in contradistinction to our own modern understanding of circulation. By deliberately uncoupling from the framework of modern physiology, this paper will offer a richer and more accurate picture of his views.