HEART AND BLOOD. 75 



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 co- 

 ronary, gastric, and gastroepiploic veins, all of which are dis- 

 tributed 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 hemor- 

 rhoidal veins. The blood returning by these veins, and bring- 

 ing the cruder juices along with it, on the one hand from the 

 stomach, where they are thin, watery, and not yet perfectly 

 chy lined ; on the other thick and more earthy, as derived from 

 the fseces, but all poured into this splenic branch, are duly tem- 

 pered by the admixture of contraries ; and nature mingling to- 

 gether these two kinds of juices, difficult of coction by reason 

 of most opposite defects, and then diluting them with a 

 large quantity of warm blood, (for we see that the quantity 

 returned from the spleen must be very large when we con- 

 template the size of its arteries,) they are brought to the porta 

 of the liver in a state of higher preparation ; the defects of either 

 extreme are supplied and compensated by this arrangement of 

 the veins. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE MOTION AND CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD ARE CONFIRMED 

 FROM THE PARTICULARS APPARENT IN THE STRUCTURE OF 

 THE HEART, AND FROM THOSE THINGS WHICH DISSECTION 

 UNFOLDS. 



I DO not find the heart as a distinct and separate part in all 

 animals ; some, indeed, such as the zoophytes, have no heart ; 

 this is because these animals are coldest, of no great bulk, of 

 soft texture or of a certain uniform sameness or simplicity of 

 structure ; among the number I may instance grubs and earth- 

 worms, and those that are engendered of putrefaction and do not 

 preserve their species. These have no heart, as not requiring 

 any impeller of nourishment into the extreme parts; for they 

 have bodies which are connate and homogeneous, and without 

 limbs; so that by the contraction and relaxation of the whole body 

 they assume and expel, move and remove the aliment. Oysters, 



