128 CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD. 



ceived an injury and affront from one more powerful than him- 

 self, and upon whom he could not have his revenge, was so 

 overcome with hatred and spite and passion, which he yet com- 

 municated to no one, that at last he fell into a strange dis- 

 temper, suffering from extreme oppression and pain of the heart 

 and breast, and the prescriptions of none of the very best phy- 

 sicians proving of any avail, he fell in the course of a few years 

 into a scorbutic and cachectic state, became tabid and died. 

 This patient only received some little relief when the whole of 

 his chest was pummelled or kneaded by a strong man, as a baker 

 kneads dough. His friends thought him poisoned by some 

 maleficent influence, or possessed with an evil spirit. His jugular 

 arteries, enlarged to the size of the thumb, looked like the aorta 

 itself, or they were as large as the descending aorta; they 

 had pulsated violently, and appeared like two long aneurisms. 

 These symptoms had led to trying the effects of arteriotomy in 

 the temples, but with no relief. In the dead body I found the 

 heart and aorta so much gorged and distended with blood, that 

 the cavities of the ventricles equalled those of a bullock's heart 

 in size. Such is the force of the blood pent up, and such are 

 the effects of its impulse. 



We may therefore conclude, that although there may be im- 

 pulse without any exit, as illustrated in the experiment lately 

 spoken of, still that this could not take place in the vessels of 

 living creatures without most serious dangers and impediments. 

 From this, however, it is manifest that the blood in its course does 

 not everywhere pass with the same celerity, neither with the 

 same force in all places and at all times, but that it varies greatly 

 according to age, sex, temperament, habit of body, and other 

 contingent circumstances, external as well as internal, natural 

 or non-natural. For it does not course through intricate 

 and obstructed passages with the same readiness that it 

 does through straight, unimpeded, and pervious channels. 

 Neither does it run through close, hard, and crowded parts, 

 with the same velocity as through spongy, soft, and permeable 

 tissues. Neither does it flow and penetrate with such swift- 

 ness when the impulse [of the heart] is slow and weak, as 

 when this is forcible and frequent, in which case the blood is 

 driven onwards with vigour and in large quantity. Nor is the 

 same blood, when it has become more consistent or earthy, so 



