> The fact that the heart by itself is incapable of sustaining the circulation of the blood was known to physicians of antiquity.

"The ancients knew" is always a good start.

> The heart, an organ weighing about three hundred grams, is supposed to 'pump' some eight thousand liters of blood per day at rest

Or 92 mL/second. Or 46-92 mL per beat.

> through millions of capillaries

I read 10 billion capillaries elsewhere, but let's go with '5 million' capillaries.

This would mean the heart pushes 18.2 nanolitres through each capillary per second.

This is pseudoscience and quackery disguised as real research. My head hurt whenever I tried to read deeper into some of the theses of this "paper".

Not sure what's the purpose of this. It goes to an archive of a German quack and mystic. Spent some minutes on these pages and couldn't find anything that satisfies my intellectual curiosity remotely.

"The heart, an organ weighing about three hundred grams, is supposed to 'pump' some eight thousand liters of blood per day at rest and much more during activity, without fatigue. In terms of mechanical work this represents the lifting of approximately 100 pounds one mile high!"

The amount of blood that descends to your legs is the same amount that the heart has to lift...

If ever anything needed a TL;DR. I'd love to read it. Something makes blood move by itself though I gave up trying to track down the point.

I know the name Rudolf Steiner for a kind of cultish school of child pedagogy, so I'll admit I was a little wary going in.

... it's a series of tubes.

Even Ted Stevens knows that.