![]() In the attempt to better understand the causes of diabetes, for instance, the English physician Thomas Willis drank some urine of a patient, stating that it “was wonderfully sweet as if it were imbued with Honey or Sugar.” ![]() Even taste was considered useful in experimental practice. Wepfer, for example, claims with regard to his anatomical observations that the existence of a visible and tangible part in the human body can only be proved through the eyes and the dexterous hand of the observer. Whoever wishes to know what is in question (whether it is perceptible, or not) must either see for himself or be credited with belief in the experts, and he will be unable to learn or be taught with greater certainty by any other means.Īlong with sight, touch was regarded as a crucial means to prove the existence of body parts. ![]() ![]() In his Exercitatio anatómica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Anatomical Studies on the Motion of the Heart and Blood, 1628), William Harvey explains that scientists who carry out autopsies in experiments (experimenta ocularia) importantly rely on the testimony of their own eyes: ![]() There is no doubt that the senses played a prominent role in seventeenthcentury experimental practices. ![]()
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