Circulation of the Blood 169 



by spirits or vapours, for the immersion in the cold 

 water would repress their ebullition, but with blood 

 only, and such as could never make its way back into 

 the arteries, either by open-mouthed communications 

 or by devious passages ; it shows, moreover, how and 

 in what way those who are travelling over snowy 

 mountains are sometimes stricken suddenly with death, 

 and other things of the same kind. 



Lest it should seem difficult for the blood to make 

 its way through the pores of the various structures of 

 the body, I shall add one illustration : The same thing 

 happens in the bodies of those that are hanged or 

 strangled, as in the arm that is bound with a fillet : 

 all the parts beyond the noose, the face, lips, tongue, 

 eyes, and every part of the head appear gorged with 

 blood, swollen, and of a deep red or livid colour ; but 

 if the noose be relaxed, in whatever position you have 

 the body, before many hours have passed you will 

 perceive the whole of the blood to have quitted the 

 head and face, and gravitated through the pores of the 

 skin, flesh, and other structures, from the superior parts 

 towards those that are inferior and dependent, until 

 they become tumid and of a dark colour. But if this 

 happens in the dead body, with the blood dead and 

 coagulated, the frame stiffened with the chill of death, 

 the passages all compressed or blocked up, it is easy to 

 perceive how much more apt it will be to occur in the 

 living subject, when the blood is alive and replete with 

 spirits, when the pores are all open, the fluid ready to 

 penetrate, and the passage in every way made easy. 



When the ingenious and acute Descartes, (whose 

 honourable mention of my name demands my acknow- 

 ledgments,) and others, having taken out the heart of a 

 fish, and put it on a plate before them, see it continuing 

 to pulsate (in contracting), and when it raises or erects 

 itself and becomes firm to the touch, they think it 

 enlarges, expands, and that its ventricles thence become 

 more capacious. But, in my opinion, they do not 



