Motion of the Heart and Blood 91 



substance, (as I have myself seen in opening the bodies 

 of those who had died in the beginning of the attack,) 

 when the pulse is always frequent, small, and occasionally 

 irregular ; but the heat increasing, the matter becoming 

 attenuated, the passages forced, and the transit made, 

 the whole body begins to rise in temperature, and the 

 pulse becomes fuller, stronger the febrile paroxysm is 

 fully formed, whilst the preternatural heat kindled in 

 the heart, is thence diffused by the arteries through the 

 whole body along with the morbific matter, which is in 

 this way overcome and dissolved by nature. 



When we perceive, further, that medicines applied 

 externally exert their influence on the body just as 

 if they had been taken internally, the truth we are con- 

 tending for is confirmed. Colocynth and aloes [applied 

 externally] move the belly, cantharides excites the urine, 

 garlic applied to the soles of the feet assists expectora- 

 tion, cordials strengthen, and an infinite number of 

 examples of the same kind might be cited. It will 

 not, therefore, be found unreasonable perchance, if we 

 say that the veins, by means of their orifices, absorb 

 some of the things that are applied externally and 

 carry this inwards with the blood, not otherwise, it 

 may be, than those of the mesentery imbibe the chyle 

 from the intestines and carry it mixed with the blood 

 to the liver. For the blood entering the mesentery 

 by the cceliac artery, and the superior and inferior 

 mesenteries, proceeds to the intestines, from which, 

 along with the chyle that has been attracted into the 

 veins, it returns by their numerous ramifications into 

 the vena portae of the liver, and from this into the 

 vena cava, and this in such wise that the blood in these 

 veins has the same colour and consistency as in other 

 veins, in opposition to what many believe to be the 

 fact. Nor indeed can we imagine two contrary motions 

 in any capillary system the chyle upwards, the blood 

 downwards. This could scarcely take place, and must 

 be held as altogether improbable. But is not the thing 



