136 WILLIAM HARVEY 



when I see how many questions can be answered, how 

 many doubts resolved, how much obscurity illustrated by 

 the truth we have declared, the light we have made to 

 shine, I see a field of such vast extent in which I might 

 proceed so far, and expatiate so widely, that this my trac- 

 tate would not only swell out into a volume, which was 

 beyond my purpose, but my whole life, perchance, would 

 not suffice for its completion. 



In this place, therefore, and that indeed in a single 

 chapter, I shall only endeavour to refer the various par- 

 ticulars that present themselves in the dissection of the 

 heart and arteries to their several uses and causes; for so 

 I shall meet with many things which receive light from 

 the truth I have been contending for, and which, in their 

 turn, render it more obvious. And indeed I would have 

 it confirmed and illustrated by anatomical arguments above 

 all others. 



There is but a single point which indeed would be more 

 correctly placed among our observations on the use of the 

 spleen, but which it will not be altogether impertinent to 

 notice in this place incidentally. From the splenic branch 

 which passes into the pancreas, and from the upper part, 

 arise the posterior coronary, gastric, and gastroepiploic 

 veins, all of which are distributed upon the stomach in 

 numerous branches and twigs, just as the mesenteric ves- 

 sels are upon the intestines. In a similar way, from the 

 inferior part of the same splenic branch, and along the 

 back of the colon and rectum proceed the hemorrhoidal 

 veins. The blood returning by these veins, and bringing 

 the cruder juices along with it, on the one hand from 

 the stomach, where they are thin, watery, and not yet per- 

 fectly chylified; on the other thick and more earthy, as 

 derived from the faeces, but all poured into this splenic 

 branch, are duly tempered by the admixture of contraries; 

 and nature mingling together these two kinds of juices, 

 difficult of coction by reason of most opposite defects, 

 and then diluting them with a large quantity of warm 

 blood, (for we see that the quantity returned from the 

 spleen must be very large when we contemplate the size 

 of its arteries,) they are brought to the porta of the liver 





