n8 Circulation of the Blood 



the chyle to the liver, and as these canals are distinct, 

 so may they be severally obstructed." But truly I 

 would here ask: how this milky fluid can be poured 

 into and pass through the liver, and how from thence 

 gain the vena cava and the ventricle of the heart 

 when our author denies that the blood of the vena 

 portse passes through the liver, and that so a circulation 

 is established ? I pause for a reply. I would fain 

 know how such a thing can be shown to be probable ; 

 especially when the blood appears to be both more 

 spirituous or subtile and penetrating than the chyle or 

 milk contained in these lacteal vessels, and is further 

 impelled by the pulsations of the arteries that it may 

 find a passage by other channels. 



Our learned author mentions a certain tract of his 

 on the Circulation of the Blood : I wish I could 

 obtain a sight of it ; perhaps I might retract. But had 

 the learned writer been so disposed, I do not see but 

 that having admitted the circular motion of the blood, 1 

 all the difficulties which were formerly felt in connexion 

 with the distribution of the chyle and the blood by the 

 same channels are brought to an equally satisfactory 

 solution ; so much so indeed that there would be no 

 necessity for inquiring after or laying down any separate 

 vessels for the chyle. Even as the umbilical veins 

 absorb the nutritive juices from the fluids of the egg 

 and transport them for the nutrition and growth of the 

 chick, in its embryo state, so do the meseraic veins 

 suck up the chyle from the intestines and transfer it to 

 the liver ; and why should we not maintain that they 

 perform the same office in the adult ? For all the 

 mooted difficulties vanish when we cease to suppose 

 two contrary motions in the same vessels, and admit 

 but one and the same continuous motion in the 

 mesenteric vessels from the intestines to the liver. 



1 Enchiridion, lib. iii, cap. 8 : " The blood incessantly and naturally 

 ascends or flows back to the heart in the veins, as in the arteries it 

 descends or departs from the heart." 



