214 Mayow 



The celebrated Harvey has maintained that the use 

 of the umbilical arteries is to supply arterial blood for 

 the concoction and colliquation of the food of the 

 foetus, and to render it suitable for nutrition ; but it is 

 scarcely probable that the umbilical arteries should be 

 designed for this purpose exclusively, since nutritious 

 juice could be well enough concocted and elaborated 

 by the mother's heat and the warmth of the uterus. 

 And it certainly seems foreign to the method of 

 Nature that blood should be poured on food for its 

 concoction, as if into a dish. For why should not 

 nutritious juice be prepared within the body of the 

 embryo as well in the uterus as after birth ? 

 Certainly there is no reason why that should be done 

 through winding patl\s and the long circuit of the 

 umbilical arteries, which could be managed by a 

 shorter route and with less trouble. And it also 

 makes for this that it is probable that the offshoots of 

 the umbilical vessels are distributed into membranes, 

 but not into juices to colliquate them, as seems to be 

 confirmed by the very examination of a hatched Qgg. 

 And certainly if the openings of the umbilical arteries 

 terminated in the primogenial juices the said juices 

 would soon be drenched with arterial blood ; but this 

 is not the case. Further, we may believe that capillary 

 vessels, of whatever kind, never end in juices but 

 always in membranes, for otherwise they would be 

 less firm and their openings would be closed by the 

 pressure of the juices on all sides. Indeed, just as the 

 lacteal vessels which originate in the intestinal 

 membranes receive the nutritious juice, passed 

 through these membranes as if through a filter, and 

 convey it into the mass of the blood, so also in an Qgg 

 and in other objects of conception we must suppose 

 that nutritious juice, properly concocted, enters the 



