THE SUBSTANCE OF THE HEART. 185 



ventricle, which receives all the venous or disintegrated blood com- 

 ing from the most divers organs; all the chyle arriving from the 

 food; moreover, all the lymph; and lastly, the nerve-spirit stream- 

 ing in from the jugular veins, which contain a far greater propor- 

 tion of this than the rest of the venous blood. This triple scale 

 of elements, the blood, the chyle and the nervous fluid, are worked, 

 kneaded and commingled by the right auricle and ventricle : is it 

 too much to grant that the motion of those cavities is intended to 

 do that which it plainly does; or that there is an end answered by 

 the commixtion. There are not two answers to the question. The 

 right ventricle, then, we will say, after a quaint authority, is the 

 great vat of the blood-system, in which the fluids are mingled to 

 form the ingredients of the red blood; after which the mixture is 

 sent through the lungs, to be skimmed of whatever comes forth 

 into the air, and to be subsequently passed into the left auricle and 

 ventricle. 



We are aware that views derived from the forms and powers of 

 the organs, are out of fashion, yet in the living body they are logical 

 and physiological, which the chemical notions are not. There are 

 two ways of looking at organic subjects, which should be carefully 

 distinguished by the mind, and carefully united in the sciences. 

 First, there is the investigation of the form or structure, at rest, or 

 in a dead state; and this gives an osseous basis to our knowledge: 

 but as permanently resting subjects are on the road to death, and 

 dead things are on the road to decomposition, this method leads, in 

 process of time, and in continuity of doctrine, through the land of 

 bad smells to sheer mineral chemistry. The second method is the 

 investigation of the movements, functions and deeds of organic 

 subjects; the examination of what they do, and their judgment by 

 their fruits; and the facts which this supplies are as flesh upon the 

 dry bones of the former knowledge. Let us apply these two me- 

 thods to the blood, both to illustrate what they are, and, at the same 

 time, to pursue our inductions respecting the offices of the heart. 

 In the first method, the examination of the dead, dying or abnor- 

 mally affected blood (p. 179) by the eye or microscope, shows that it 

 consists of red globules in a transparent serum ; and as the blood 

 finally dies, it undergoes a series of changes, forming a clot or co- 



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