102 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



To these researches we must now turn ; and we may here fitly 

 consider together w T ith Malpighi's labours those of other men 

 studying the same subject. 



For this purpose it will be well to go back a little and pass 

 in brief review what were the views held in the days before 

 Harvey concerning the functions of the structures known as 

 glands. Under the term gland however many of the older 

 writers included also many other organs, such as the brain and 

 the tongue, in fact almost all the viscera except the heart and 

 alimentary canal ; for their point of view was that of gross 

 anatomy, not like ours that of physiology. 



Of these glands attention was directed chiefly to three, the 

 liver, the spleen, and the kidneys. 



The functions of the kidney seemed in some respects fairly 

 simple. Amply supplied with both veins and arteries, the 

 substance of the kidney, strained off as Vesalius says from the 

 blood not only of the veins, but also of the arteries, some but 

 not all of the serosity ; and this gathered in the pelvis of the 

 kidney as urine was conducted by the ureters to the bladder. 

 The great difficulty was to understand how the substance of the 

 kidney, dense and firm, most like the substance of the heart, 

 says Vesalius, though destitute of fibres of its own, these being 

 supplied only by its own arteries, veins and nerves, could effect 

 this straining. 



The functions of the liver too seemed to the men of those 

 times to be fairly well understood by them ; the view which 

 they took was somewhat as follows. The vena porta? carried 

 to the liver nutritive material gathered up from the stomach 

 and intestines, and by the excessive branching within the 

 liver brought that material within the grasp of the * soft 

 parenchymatous hepatic substance. By help of this substance 

 a concoction was effected, a sort of fermentation was carried 

 on. In some such way as the crude juice of the grape is 

 fermented into wine, with the separation on one hand of the 

 heavier fsex which settles to the bottom, and of the lighter foam 

 which rises to the top, so the crude gross blood of the vena 

 porta? was purified by the hepatic substance into the purer 

 blood which made its way by the vena cava to the heart, through 



