Chapter 9 critique

I enjoyed Chapter 9 because it highlighted theaccomplishment of a woman. Although Anne Conway was afflicted by many unfortunate conditions, such as the bleeding from her jugular vein and her ingestion of mercury, she still rose to the occassion & produced lots of impressive works. Anne's ingestion of mercury to treat her migraines was ridiculous to me. The things considered treatments, back then, was interesting and very hazardous to their health. I agreed with the statement that Burd made when she discussed the mind over matter theory. One, I believe, can ignore the feeling of pain if they truly wanted to in certain circumstances. There are occurrences where people are fighting and they don't realize that they are injured and in pain until afterwards when they actally think about it. For a woman to have her work contribute to theology proposed by men like Willis, is truly amazing. Her works contributed to the continuously evolving theories about the human soul. She educated herself on ideas closely related to philosophy and gained the esteem of men from that field. That was impressive since women were not considered fit to be educated during that time period. The use of stray dogs for experimentation done by Willis disturbed me a little because I am an animal rights activist and I hate to hear about experiments done on animals (especially dogs) but I am glad to see that the procedure was successful and Willis did come up with a procedure for blood transfusion. It was interesting to read how his primative procedure of physically transferring blood from one animal to the next. We have progressed so much medically, for now, our techinique is so much more advanced. We put the blood in bags and transfer it to the patients via their veins. We, even, have blood drives so that we can have different types of blood for everyone in case of an emergency. Willis, as a person, has gained much respect from me due to his passion and determination for medicine. Despite his massive amounts of money, prestige, and wealth, he still wanted help those who were less fortunate than he was. Information on Anne Conway: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conway/ Cartesian Dualism: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Onto/OntoDerk.htm Timeline on Blood transfusion History: http://www.bloodbook.com/trans-history.html