MtfceUanea Curiofa. 1 5 3 



A fbort Difcourfe concerning Con- 

 co&ion : Read at a Meeting of 

 the Royal Society, May . . . 1699, 

 by Clopton Havers, M. I>. 



. Fellow of the Royal Society. 



TH E manner in which the Digeftion of 

 the Aliment is performed, is a thing not 

 very eaGe to be underftood and explained. 

 However, it has not efcap'd the Gonje&ures of 

 fome Philofophical Men, who having curioufly 

 obferv'd the Phenomena of Nature, and enqui- 

 red into their Caufes, have, amongft other 

 things, endeavour d to account for this. But 

 their Sentiments about it have been various, 

 and the Hypothecs, by which they have ftudi- 

 ed to explain it, very different. Some have 

 thought the C6ncoc*Koh of the Food to be a 

 kind of Elixation ; and tjsat the groffer and 

 more fbltd Parts being, as it were, boiPd in the 

 Liquid by the Heat of the Stomach, and the 

 Parts adjacent to it, as the Liver, Spleen, and 

 Omentum, are by along and continued Elixa- 

 tion, firft rendered more tender, and then colli- 

 quated, and diflblved into minuter Particles, fb 

 as to mix more equally with the Fluid, and with 

 that to make one Pulpament, or chylous MaS. 

 And Hippocrates, tho he does not plainly call It 

 an Elixation, yet teems to attribute the Conco* 

 £tion of the Food to the Heat of the Stomach, 

 as th* Caufe of it, Sett. 4. Ubro defalubri vitlus 



rathne* 



