THE MOTION OF THE CHYLE. 449 



by Eristratus, in the ancient world 2 , in the time of 

 Ptolemy ; but Aselli was the first modern who at- 

 tended to them. He described them in a treatise, 

 entitled De Venis Lacteis, cum figuris elegantis- 

 simis, printed at Milan in 1627, the year after the 

 death of the author. This work is remarkable as 

 the first which exhibits coloured anatomical figures ; 

 the arteries and the veins are represented in red, 

 the lacteals in black. 



Eustachius 3 , at an earlier period, had described 

 (in the horse) the thoracic duct by which the chyle 

 is poured into the subclavian vein, on the right side 

 of the neck. But this description did not excite so 

 much notice as to prevent its being forgotten, and 

 rediscovered in 1650, after the knowledge of the 

 circulation of the blood had given more importance 

 to such a discovery. Up to this time 4 , it had been 

 supposed that the lacteals carried the chyle to the 

 liver, and that the blood was manufactured there. 

 This opinion had prevailed in all the works of the 

 ancients and moderns ; its falsity was discovered by 

 Pecquet, a French physician, and published in 1651, 

 in his New Anatomical Experiments ; in which are 

 discovered a receptacle of the chyle, unknown till 

 then, and the vessel which conveys it to the subcla- 

 vian vein. Pecquet himself, and other anatomists, 

 soon connected this discovery with the doctrine, 

 then recently promulgated, of the circulation of the 

 blood. In 1665, these vessels, and the lymphatics 



2 Cuv. Hist Sc. p. 50. 3 Ib. p. 34. 4 Ib. p. 365. 

 VOL. in. G G 



