On the Generation of Animals
Notebook
William Harvey's Exercitationes de Generatione Animalium (On the Generation of Animals, 1651), the second of his great works after his discovery of the circulation of the blood, is a foundational text of embryology. Drawing on close observation of the developing chick egg and of deer, Harvey rejected inherited theories of preformation and spontaneous generation, arguing famously that all living things come from an egg (ex ovo omnia) and describing the gradual emergence of the parts of the embryo. The translation is Robert Willis's, matching Harvey's other works in this collection.
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