Note 58 — Chapter X · MECHANISM

Not only is the word pump constantly used to describe the heart’s action, but one must also consider its reaction on the meaning of older physiological terms such as valve. Pump, with the meaning ‘ship’s pump’, is found in English in the fifteenth century, but in the sense of ‘instrument for raising water’ it is unknown to the Teutonic languages before the sixteenth century, though instruments of some sort had been used for that purpose in classical times. An understanding of the underlying mechanical principle, however, only developed, as we should expect, in the seventeenth century, when the words suction and hydraulic appeared in, for instance, Bacon’s writings. Harvey published his treatise, De motu cordis e sanguinis, in 1628.