Discourse on the Method, part 5, ¶ 6-1

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René Descartes

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Pierce County — Thumbnail History (historylink.org) Pierce County, located in southwestern Washington abutting Puget Sound, encompasses an extremely wide range of elevations: from sea level on Puget Sound to 14,410 at the summit of Mount Rainier. The entire footprint of Mount Rainier, an active Cascade volcano encased in more than 35 square miles of snow and glacial ice, lies within the county’s boundaries. Pierce County comprises 1,675 square miles, placing it 23rd in size among Washington’s 39 counties…

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Discourse on the Method (Veitch translation)

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But as soon as two drops of blood have thus passed, one into each of the cavities, these drops which cannot but be very large, because the orifices through which they pass are wide, and the vessels from which they come full of blood, are immediately rarefied, and dilated by the heat they meet with.

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Besides, I wish such persons to observe that the grand artery and the arterial vein are of much harder and firmer texture than the venous artery and the hollow vein; and that the two last expand before entering the heart, and there form, as it were, two pouches denominated the auricles of the heart, which are composed of a substance similar to that of the heart itself; and that there is always more warmth in the heart than in any other part of the body; and, finally, that this heat is capable of causing any drop of blood that passes into the cavities rapidly to expand and dilate, just as all liquors do when allowed to fall drop by drop into a highly heated vessel.