HEART AND BLOOD. 69 



whence sustenance may be derived ; and upon which concoction 

 arid nutrition, and all vegetative energy may depend. Now, 

 that the heart is this place, that the heart is the principle of 

 life, and that all passes in the manner just mentioned, I trust 

 no one will deny. 



The blood, therefore, required to have motion, and indeed 

 such a motion that it should return again to the heart; for 

 sent to the external parts of the body far from its fountain, as 

 Aristotle says, and without motion, it would become congealed. 

 For we see motion generating and keeping up heat and spirits 

 under all circumstances, and rest allowing them to escape and 

 be dissipated. The blood, therefore, become thick or congealed 

 by the cold of the extreme and outward parts, and robbed of 

 its spirits, just as it is in the dead, it was imperative that from 

 its fount and origin, it should again receive heat and spirits, 

 and all else requisite to its preservation that, by returning, it 

 should be renovated and restored. 



We frequently see how the extremities are chilled by the 

 external cold, how the nose and cheeks and hands look blue, 

 and how the blood, stagnating in them as in the pendent or 

 lower parts of a corpse, becomes of a dusky hue ; the limbs at 

 the same time getting torpid, so that they can scarcely be moved, 

 and seem almost to have lost their vitality. Now they can by 

 no means be so effectually, and especially so speedily restored 

 to heat and colour and life, as by a new afflux and appulsion 

 of heat from its source. But how can parts attract in which 

 the heat and life are almost extinct? Or how should they 

 whose passages are filled with condensed and frigid blood, admit 

 fresh aliment renovated blood unless they had first got rid 

 of their old contents ? Unless the heart were truly that foun- 

 tain where life and heat are restored to the refrigerated fluid, 

 and whence new blood, warm, imbued with spirits, being sent 

 out by the arteries, that which has become cooled and effete is 

 forced on, and all the particles recover their heat which was 

 failing, and their vital stimulus well-nigh exhausted. 



Hence it is that if the heart be unaffected, life and health 

 may be restored to almost all the other parts of the body; but 

 the heart being chilled, or smitten with any serious disease, it 

 seems matter of necessity that the whole animal fabric should 

 suffer and fall into decay. When the source is corrupted, 



