384 ON GENERATION. 



Instead of a verbal answer, therefore, I carried the young 

 man himself to the king, that his majesty might with his own 

 eyes behold this wonderful case : that, in a man alive and well, 

 he might, without detriment to the individual, observe the 

 movement of the heart, and, with his proper hand even touch 

 the ventricles as they contracted. And his most excellent 

 majesty, as well as myself, acknowledged that the heart was 

 without the sense of touch ; for the youth never knew when 

 we touched his heart, except by the sight or the sensation he 

 had through the external integument. 



We also particularly observed the movements of the heart, 

 viz. : that in the diastole it was retracted and withdrawn ; 

 whilst in the systole it emerged and protruded ; and the systole 

 of the heart took place at the moment the diastole or pulse in 

 the wrist was perceived ; to conclude, the heart struck the walls 

 of the chest, and became prominent at the time it bounded 

 upwards and underwent contraction on itself. 



Neither is this the place for taking up that other controversy; 

 to wit, whether the blood alone serves for the nutrition of the 

 body? Aristotle in several places contends that the blood is 

 the ultimate aliment of the body, and in this view he is sup- 

 ported by the whole body of physicians. But many things of 

 difficult interpretation, and that hang but indifferently together, 

 follow from this opinion of theirs. For when the medical writers 

 speak of the blood in their physiological disquisitions, and teach 

 that the above is its sole use and end, viz. : to supply nourish- 

 ment to the body, they proceed to compose it of four humours, 

 or juices, adducing arguments for such a view from the com- 

 binations of the four primary qualities ; and then they assert 

 that the mass of the blood is made up of the two kinds of bile, 

 the yellow and the black, of pituita, and the blood properly so 

 called. And thus they arrive at their four humours, of which 

 the pituita is held to be cold and moist ; the black bile cold 

 and dry ; the yellow bile hot and dry ; and the blood hot and 

 moist. Further, of each of these several kinds, they maintain 

 that some are nutritious, and compose the whole of the body ; 

 others, again, they say are excrementitious. Still further, they 

 suppose that the blood proper is composed of the nutritious or 

 heterogeneous portions; but the constitution of the mass is such, 

 that the pituita is a cruder matter, which the more powerful 



