1910–1911
Britannica 11th
Encyclopaedia Britannica · 11th edition
ARTERIES (Gr. apnrtpia, probably from alpeiv, to raise, but popularly connected by the ancients with ar/p, air), in anatomy, the elastic tubes which carry the blood away from the heart to the tissues. As, after death, they are always found empty, the older anatomists believed that they contained air, and to this belief they owe the name, which was originally given to the windpipe (trachea). Two great trunks, the aorta and pulmonary artery, leave the heart and divide again and again until they become minute vessels …
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- Vol. 2, pp. 666-669