Latin translation from a French manuscript copy of Descarte's epochal work on physiology, the first European textbook to explain physical motion in purely mechanical terms. It was originally written as a physiological appendix to Discours sur la Méthode (1637) but was suppressed by Descartes after the condemnation of Galileo in 1633. The original French version was published in 1664 two years after the Latin translation by Schuyl.
"In conceptualizing man as a machine, Descartes helped emancipate the study of human physiology from religious and cultural constraints and validated a clinical and experimental approach to anatomy and physiology" [Grolier]