What is blood? Despite William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood, many questions about blood itself remained unanswered. This article asks how and why Dutch medical men in the early eighteenth century initiated studies to understand the properties of blood. Medical professors analysed blood in chemical laboratories, as they believed that blood chemistry promoted new understandings of human physiology and pathology. Others, however, grew to be deeply sceptical about chemistry and argued that there existed a discrepancy between blood in vitro and blood in vivo. They preferred quantitative measurements, hoping that these would provide useful knowledge for making diagnoses and treating wounds. This article analyses these competing approaches to blood research, arguing that the discussion went beyond the problem of methodology and was directly linked to the question of blood’s essential yet disputed quality: was blood alive?

中文翻译：

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血液的本质：在 18 世纪荷兰共和国辩论血液学和血液化学


什么是血？尽管威廉哈维发现了血液循环，但关于血液本身的许多问题仍未得到解答。这篇文章询问了 18 世纪早期的荷兰医生如何以及为什么开始研究以了解血液的特性。医学教授在化学实验室分析血液，因为他们相信血液化学促进了对人体生理学和病理学的新理解。然而，其他人对化学产生了深深的怀疑，并认为体外血液和体内血液之间存在差异。他们更喜欢定量测量，希望这些可以为诊断和治疗伤口提供有用的知识。本文分析了这些相互竞争的血液研究方法，