192 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



prevented the other organs being displaced when their 

 possessor moved about. This was a sorry conclusion, 

 no doubt ; but then the spleen presented no ordinary 

 problem to primitive physiology. 



Listen to a quaint translation of what Pliny wrote 

 about this organ : " This member hath a proprietie by 

 itself sometimes to hinder a man's running : where- 

 upon professed runners in the race that bee troubled 

 with the splene have a devise to burn and waste it 

 with a hot yron. And no marveile : for why ? They 

 say that the splene may be taken out of the bodie by 

 way of incision, and yet the creature live neverthe- 

 lesse ; but if it be man or woman that is thus cut for 

 the splene, hee or shee loseth their laughing by the 

 meanes. For sure it is that intemperate laughers have 

 always great splenes." Losing the " splene," accord- 

 ing to Pliny, was thus " no joke," both in a literal and 

 in an actual sense. So far he is right, however, in 

 his statement that the spleen may be extirpated from 

 animals (including man) without apparent ill-effect. 

 This fact would only seem to justify the classic idea 

 that the organ was of little or no use in the vital 

 economy ; but, as we shall see, there are other and 

 better ways and fashions of explaining the anomaly. 



It must be confessed that, as regards the spleen, 

 there is not much to be told, structurally. Yet, from 

 a basis of anatomical facts, we reach clear enough 

 notions of what the spleen does. About five inches 

 long by three or four inches broad, and, say, an inch 

 in thickness and seven ounces in weight, the spleen is 

 an organ of dark bluish-red colour, which lies, snugly 

 enough, at the left side of the stomach. As I have 

 noted, no tube or duct leads away from it that is to 

 say, it does not appear to be a manufacturing organ, 



