Background
The exact date of birth and a place of birth of Francisco de la Reyna are not known. He was born around 1520 in Spain.
Libro de Albeyteria by Francisco de la Reyna
physiologist scientist Surgeon author
The exact date of birth and a place of birth of Francisco de la Reyna are not known. He was born around 1520 in Spain.
Little is known of Reyna’s life except that he was a farrier, veterinary surgeon, and “swine-doctor” of Zamora who cared for the horses of the Spanish nobility. The license for printing Reyna’s popular Libro de Albeyteria was issued at Madrid in 1546, and the earliest dated edition known is that of Astorga, 1547. The manual, which went through at least thirteen editions, contains a controversial passage on the anatomy and physiology of the horse which has occasionally engaged the attention of historians since the eighteenth century when Benito Feijoo y Montenegro claimed for Reyna the discovery of the circulation of the blood.
Reyna’s account was offered not as a discovery but as well-known information to be learned by the student. According to the Galenic system, when a vessel in a horse’s leg is cut, it should bleed from the end nearest the body. Reyna explained why the reverse can be true by suggesting that blood flows into the leg through surface veins and out through deeper ones. Yet his narrative is so vague that the precise course is not clear, and he did not suggest a capillary structure.
Reyna's anatomy was essentially Galenic. The blood originates in the liver and is distributed through the veins. In no part of the Libro do we find the concept of the heart acting as a mechanical force-pump to motivate a circulatory system; Reyna merely says that some veins have the function of carrying nourishment to the heart. Because of this, and his statement about the liver, we must interpret the passage concerning the heart as the emperor of the body in an Aristotelian sense and not as anticipation of Harvey, who although an Aristotelian himself, discovered the true function of the heart in the circulatory system.
Reyna mentioned the arteries only once and not as part of his “wheel”; presumably, their function is the Galenic one since none other was mentioned. Reyna did not suggest a passage of blood from the arteries to the veins. Galen had described an alternating movement of blood and pneuma occurring between the arteries and veins through the synanastomoses, but Reyna did not mention this.
Despite his traditionalism, the question posed at the beginning of the passage shows that Reyna could not square observations made during venesection with traditional physiology. His theory might be considered an attempt to reconcile observation (upward or centripetal flow of blood in equine leg veins) with Galenism (downward or centrifugal flow) by postulating both types of flow in differing veins. This interpretation would be more plausible had he not reported the exterior veins as carrying blood downward. Exterior veins were surely used for venesection, so that the theory is surprisingly discordant with the observation which inspired the passage.