iv] of Glands and Tissues. 103 



the separation of two impurities. Of these the one, the lighter 

 one, corresponding to the foam or yeast of fermenting must, 

 escaped as yellow bile into the minute beginnings of the biliary 

 duct, and was thence carried to the gall-bladder, from which it 

 from time to time escaped into the duodenum. The other, the 

 heavier muddy impurity, passed back as black bile, according 

 to common belief Vesalius says, meaning thereby that he did 

 not believe it, to the spleen, being carried thither by the 

 veins. 



About the spleen itself there was more divergence of 

 opinion. Admitting that the black bile carried to it from 

 the liver was by the substance of the spleen acted upon and 

 altered in some way, authorities were not agreed as to what 

 followed. Most were of opinion that black bile acted upon by 

 the spleen was poured into the stomach, and so passing through 

 the intestine was discharged with the faeces, having in the 

 stomach, if not along the intestine, served some useful purpose. 

 But while some maintained that there was a definite canal, 

 leading from the spleen to the stomach, and indeed to the 

 cardiac end of the stomach, along which this modified black 

 bile passed, others supposed it to be carried by veins. Vesalius 

 is very sarcastic over both one and the other of these as well as 

 over other views of this matter, and scoffs at those who are 

 anatomists by imagination and not by dissection. He obviously 

 did not believe in any passage of material at all from the spleen 

 to the stomach, whether by a special duct or by the veins. But 

 the view was in one form or other very generally adopted ; it 

 served as the theoretic basis of medical practice, and is still 

 preserved in the popular phrase of suffering from the spleen. 



Other glandular bodies such as the pancreas, the salivary 

 glands, the thymus and the thyroid, were known, as well as the 

 lymphatic glands scattered over different parts of the body; 

 little attention however was paid to these. Neither salivary 

 glands nor pancreas were known to possess ducts ; and all these 

 varied bodies were regarded, if noticed at all, from the same 

 point of view. 



It will be remembered that before the establishment of 

 Harvey's views blood was supposed to be carried by the veins 



