ARCANA MICROCOSMI ; Or, The hid secrets of Man's Body discovered; in an Anatomical Duel between Aristotle and Galen concerning the Parts thereof : As also by a Discovery of the strange and marvelous Diseases, Symptomes & Accidents of Man's Body. With a refutation of Doctor Brown's Vulgar Errors, the Lord Bacon's Natural History, and Doctor Harvey's Book de Generatione, Comenius, and others; Whereto is annexed a letter from Doctor Fr. to the Author, and his Answer thereto; touching Doctor Hervey's Book De Generatione.
London: Thos Newcomb for John Clark, 1652. Second edition of a work first published the preeding year and the first to include the attack on Harvey. 8vo, [16], 207, [5], 209-267, [8]. Title page printed in red and black. Bound in early vellum; a few contemporary marginal notes, some soiling, last blank leaf mounted to rear free endpaper. Krivatsy 9951; Russell (1963) 728; Wing R1947; Keynes Harvey 358; Keynes Browne 233; Osler 4559. Item #47395
This is the first printed commentary on Harvey's book and Ross adds a letter from another of Harvey's critics, James Primrose. Harvey, of course, discovered the circulation of the blood and wrote his De Generatione (1651) on the generation of animals. That was also the first book on midwifery by an Englishman. Ross (1590-1654) was born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was the first to translate the Koran into English and was called "the vigilant watchdog of conservatism and orthodoxy" by Richard Westfall. He attacked Thomas Browne (defending, for instance, the beliefs that crystal is a sort of fossilized ice, and that garlic hinders magnetism) and many other contemporary ideas. In other controversies he took on Sir Kenelm Digby, Thomas Hobbes, and William Harvey. (See wikipedia).
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