94 Motion of the 



every description. Finally, reflecting on every part of 

 medicine, physiology, pathology, semeiotics, therapeutics, 

 when I see how many questions can be answered, how 

 many doubts resolved, how much obscurity illustrated, 

 by the truth we have declared, the light we have made 

 to shine, I see a field of such vast extent in which I 

 might proceed so far, and expatiate so widely, that this 

 my tractate would not only swell out into a volume, 

 which was beyond my purpose, but my whole life, 

 perchance, would not suffice for its completion. 



In this place, therefore, and that indeed in a single 

 chapter, I shall only endeavour to refer the various 

 particulars that present themselves in the dissection 

 of the heart and arteries to their several uses and 

 causes ; for so I shall meet with many things which 

 receive light from the truth I have been contending 

 for, and which, in their turn, render it more obvious. 

 And indeed I would have it confirmed and illustrated 

 by anatomical arguments above all others. 



There is but a single point which indeed would be 

 more correctly placed among our observations on the 

 use of the spleen, but which it will not be altogether 

 impertinent to notice in this place incidentally. From 

 the splenic branch which passes into the pancreas, and 

 from the upper part, arise the posterior coronary, gastric, 

 and gastroepiploic veins, all of which are distributed 

 upon the stomach in numerous branches and twigs, 

 just as the mesenteric vessels are upon the intestines ; 

 in like manner, from the inferior part of the same 

 splenic branch, and along the back of the colon and 

 rectum proceed the hemorrhoidal veins. The blood 

 returning by these veins, and bringing the cruder juices 

 along with it, on the one hand from the stomach, where 

 they are thin, watery, and not yet perfectly chylified ; 

 on the other thick and more earthy, as derived from 

 the faeces, but all poured into this splenic branch, are 

 duly tempered by the admixture of contraries ; and 

 nature mingling together these two kinds of juices, 



