Sir Everard Home on the 
38 
forming a part of the materials employed in producing the 
bile ; the remainder only returning by the vena cava to the 
heart. 
This additional quantity of liquids passing along the sple- 
nic vein, accounts for its being five times the size of the artery, 
as well as for the blood in that vein having a greater propor- 
tion of serum than the blood in any other, which has been 
long asserted, and which I found by actual experiment to be 
the case ; but being unable to account for it, as I can now, I 
was willing to admit that the mode of measuring might be 
erroneous. 
On the structure and uses of the spleen. 
In the different investigations that have been made of this 
organ, the following facts have been ascertained ; but still 
neither the more minute texture, nor the ultimate use has 
been, till now, discovered. 
It was known that a man could live without his spleen ; 
but there is no satisfactory account upon record of the incon- 
venience he suffered from its loss. 
It has been ascertained that the spleen, under different 
circumstances, is larger or smaller in size. In an ass after 
fasting two days, it was half the size that it was met with in 
another, killed two hours after drinking freely. In the 
diminished state there are no corpuscules ; in the enlarged 
state they are very numerous. 
The spleen was believed to consist of a net-work of liga- 
mentous structure, with numerous arterial and venal branches, 
having cells containing small corpuscules or glands ; but this 
