108 THE FUNCTION 



power and design displayed throughout nature, I instantly revolt 

 at such an explanation as Paley's, to say nothing of its anatomical 

 absurdity. 



Sir Everard Home once fancied that the spleen is intended to 

 receive " a great portion of our drink from the cardiac end of 

 the stomach, so that these may pass through a short cut, hitherto 

 unknown, from the stomach to the spleen, and thus into the mass 

 of blood." m His friends having, among other experiments, passed 

 a ligature around the pyloric extremity of the stomach of a dog, 

 injected into this receptacle a solution of rhubarb ; and, on killing 

 the animal, some few hours afterwards, none of the absorbents 

 of the stomach were found distended, nor could any trace of 

 rhubarb be detected in the liver, but evident traces existed in the 

 spleen and in the urine. When fluids had been drunk, the spleen 

 was turgid, and exhibited cells full of a colourless liquid that 

 were at other times collapsed and almost imperceptible, a 

 circumstance rendering it unlikely, I may remark in reference 

 to Dr. Haighton's hypothesis, that the spleen is diminished in 

 bulk by the distension of the stomach ; for, first, compression, 

 sufficient to prevent the artery from sending into it the usual 

 quantity of blood, would prevent the entrance of fluids by any 

 other vessels ; and, secondly, we learn that the spleen is actually 

 distended by the fluid portion of the contents of the sto- 

 mach. 



During the distension of the spleen, when the pylorus was not 

 tied, the rhubarb appeared more strongly in the blood of the 

 splenic than in that of other veins. If coloured solids without 

 fluids were introduced into the stomach, the cells of the spleen 

 were not distended, nor did this organ or its veins give more signs 

 of the colouring matter than others. 



Unfortunately, the size of the spleen is considerable, in those 

 warm-blooded animals which never drink ; as well as in bisulcous 

 animals, whose spleen adheres to the paunch, receiving the crude 

 food only, but never the drink, which is prevented from entering 

 it by the well-known mechanism of a semicanal running from the 

 oasophagus to the omasum. 



From later experiments, published in 1811, the writer com- 

 pletely changed his opinion. It seems that traces of rhubarb were 

 discoverable in the bile as well as in the spleen : and that it tinged 



m Phil. Trans. 1808. 



