VOL. XXIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 653 



effects of resinous purgatives ; but if this precaution were used to make the 

 extract with aqueous dissolvents, instead of the sulphureous, there would be no 

 need of that corrective. 



Monsieur Morin, who spoke thirdly, offered a particular project of a new 

 system for the passage of the drink and urine. He said, that having observed 

 the extreme swiftness with which the drink passes sometimes, as in drinking 

 medicinal waters, he thence conjectured that it did not always go the way, which 

 anatomy shows us it takes usually ; and that therefore it must have some other 

 shorter passage, which is not yet discovered. A strong proof of this conjecture 

 is, that those who purge with an infusion of cassia, render in a very short time 

 by urine, a tincture almost as black as the infusion they have taken ; which 

 would not constantly happen, if the drink took always the ordinary course. He 

 then took pains to discover this unknown passage for the urine, and he per- 

 suades himself that he has found it. 



He concluded that the drink, besides the ordinary passage which it has to the 

 bladder by the emulgent veins, kidneys, and ureters, has likewise another by 

 the pores of the stomach, and of the bladder. He called those which pass by 

 this new way the first urines, and those that pass the ordinary way the second 

 urines. He afterwards proved the possibility of this new system by experiments. 

 He said that having taken the ventricle and bladder out of a dead body, and 

 filled them with water, it ran out through the pores ; and turning them inside 

 outwards, the water that was put in them run through after the same manner ; 

 and that lastly, letting them swim in water, it easily soaked through into them. 

 Whence he concludes, that in a living body it ought to pass with much greater 

 facility by the tension of the stomach, for the aliment like a sponge soaks up 

 the liquor, in which it swims, and so swells up the stomach ; which in its turn 

 again, pressing the food, squeezes out the liquor from it, and forces it to filter 

 through its pores. With this pression it is easy to conceive, that the drink 

 must pass easier through the pores of the stomach than the wat.r, which was 

 put into the stomach taken out of a dead body; and that this liquor re-entering 

 into the bladder makes the first urine : it is evident likewise, that this pression 

 is never strong enough to press out all the liquor from the stomach ; so that 

 there remains enough to carry on the aliment and chyle, after which it comes 

 away high loaded and coloured, and makes what he calls the second urines. He 

 added, that the passage of the drink into the capacity of the lower belly did not 

 cause the dropsy, because that liquor, aided by the pressure of the parts that 

 encompassed it, finds an easy entrance into the bladder, and none into the in- 

 testines, because of the thick mucus that lines them. The easiness of this pas- 

 sage is the cause that mineral waters run away so suddenly by the first ways, and 



