CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD 133 



pears that the contagion impressed upon or deposited in 

 a particular part, is by-and-by carried by the returning 

 current of blood to the heart, and by that organ is sent 

 to contaminate the whole body. 



In tertian fever, the morbific cause seeking the heart 

 in the first instance, and hanging about the heart and lungs, 

 renders the patient short-winded, disposed to sighing, and 

 indisposed to exertion, because the vital principle is op- 

 pressed and the blood forced into the lungs and rendered 

 thick. It does not pass through them, (as I have myself 

 seen in opening the bodies of those who had died in the 

 beginning of the attack,) when the pulse is always fre- 

 quent, small, and occasionally irregular; but the heat in- 

 creasing, the matter becoming attenuated, the passages 

 forced, and the transit made, the whole body begins to 

 rise in temperature, and the pulse becomes fuller and 

 stronger. The febrile paroxysm is fully formed, whilst 

 the preternatural heat kindled in the heart is thence dif- 

 fused by the arteries through the whole body along with 

 the morbific matter, which is in this way overcome and 

 dissolved by nature. 



When we perceive, further, that medicines applied ex- 

 ternally exert their influence on the body just as if they 

 had been taken internally, the truth we are contending 

 for is confirmed. Colocynth and aloes in this way move 

 the belly, cantharides excites the urine, garlic applied to 

 the soles of the feet assists expectoration, cordials strengthen, 

 and an infinite number of examples of the same kind might 

 be cited. Perhaps it will not, therefore, be found unrea- 

 sonable, if we say that the veins, by means of their ori- 

 fices, absorb some of the things that are applied externally 

 and carry this inwards with the blood, not otherwise, it may 

 be, than those of the mesentery imbibe the chyle from the 

 intestines and carry it mixed with the blood to the liver. 

 For the blood entering the mesentery by the coeliac artery, 

 and the superior and inferior mesenteries, proceeds to the 

 intestines, from which, along with the chyle that has been 

 attracted into the veins, it returns by their numerous rami- 

 fications into the vena portae of the liver, and from this 

 into the vena cava, and this in such wise that the blood 



