220 VACUITY OF THE ARTERIES AFTER DEATH. 
human physiology and pathology were advanced in support 
of this view. The capillary circulation in plants, the circu- 
lation in holothuria and moilusca are mostly capillary. The 
growth of the uterus during pregnancy shows a vascular 
activity independent of the heart. It was shown that the 
circulation of blood through the liver could not possibly be 
effected by the heart’s action alone, the blood in the portal 
vein having lost too much of its arterial pressure. The 
transmission of bullock’s blood through the vessels of newly 
killed animals was declared to be effected by the aid of the 
capillary force. As a further proof of the existence of this 
force, the circulation in the acephalous or acardiac foetus was 
put forth, and a short review of some of the theories of this 
remarkable phenomenon given. In asphyxia and suffocation, 
the heart is unable to drive the blood through the lungs ; in 
other cases, as after death from yellow fever, the capillaries 
transmit blood to the veins without the heart. Cases of 
spontaneous gangrene, where the capillaries were found per- 
vious, are recorded, yet the heart could not effect nutrition. 
All these facts tend to show that there is a force which is 
able to empty the arterial vessels, and that this force very 
likely is the second promoter of the course of the blood after 
the heart, and that the heart alone could not keep a circula- 
tion sufficient to effect nutrition, without these diffused forces 
of the capillary system. 
Dr. Crisp would confine his remarks chiefly to the subject 
of the portal circulation, which alone would have occupied 
sufficient time for the paper of the evening. The author 
assumed that the blood in the portal system must be circu- 
lated by capillary contraction, because the vis a tergo of the 
heart and elasticity of the arteries could not materially in- 
fluence the current of blood in these veins ; but he, (Dr. 
Crisp) was surprised that Dr. Thudichum had altogether 
overlooked the suction power of the right auricle of the 
heart, which was supplied with blood at each diastole, and 
that the action of this auricle continued in some animals for 
some time after death. The author had asserted that the 
portal system of veins was not furnished with valves ; and as 
he had appealed several times to Dr. Carpenter as an autho- 
rity, he (Dr. Crisp) begged to direct the attention of Dr. 
Thudichum to a recent review in the British and Foreign 
Journal , (Jan. 1855,) which bore the signature of Dr. Car- 
penter, in which he built up a theory respecting the spleen 
on the assumption that its vein was not supplied with valves, 
although the very animal (the horse) upon the blood of 
which the experiments were made had often several pairs of 
