In process of time an extremely limpid and pure watery fluid (similar to

that which in the hen’s egg I have called the colliquament) is secreted

by this “primordium” or “ovum;” in clearness and brilliancy far

exceeding the remaining fluid of the ovum in which it is contained. It

is of a circular form, and inclosed in a very delicate and transparent

membrane of its own called the “amnion.” The other fluid, of a denser

and thicker character, is contained in the outer envelope, or chorion,

which is in immediate contact with the concave surface of the uterus,

and which also encompasses the entire ovum: the shape of this second

membrane varies according to that of the uterus: in some animals it is

oval, in others oblong, but in those with cloven feet it resembles a

saddle-bag. After a short time a red pulsating point shows itself within

the transparent substance, and from this point exceedingly fine twigs,

or rather rays of vessels, start forth. By and by the first aggregated

portion of the body makes its appearance, folded upon itself

orbicularly, and somewhat resembling a grub: the remaining parts follow

in the order described in our history. For I have ascertained that the

production of the fœtus from their ova or “conceptions” in viviparous

animals, takes place exactly in the same way as the growth of the chick

within the egg.

As I before observed, “conceptions” in viviparous animals vary in form,

number, and in their modes of attachment to the uterus. At first,

especially in the cloven-footed animals, the “conception” does not

adhere to the uterus, but is only in contact with, and fills and

distends the organ, and can be easily extracted entire. In

cloven-footed animals, which conceive within the horns of the uterus,

and also in the solidungula, one ovum only of this kind is found, and

that stretching up into either horn of the uterus: and although these

animals sometimes produce one, sometimes two young at a birth, and so

sometimes one, sometimes two colliquaments are found, one in the right,

the other in the left horn of the uterus, yet the two are always

contained in one and the same ovum.

In other animals, however, the number of ova answers to the number of

fœtuses, and within them are as many colliquaments: this is the case in

the dog, cat, mouse, and other animals of this kind with teeth in either

jaw. In cloven-footed animals the ovum is shaped like a saddle-bag: the

form, in fact, under which Fabricius represented the allantois. In the

mare, the figure of the uterus internally resembles an oblong bag; in

the woman it is of a globular form.

In animals in whom the “conception” adheres to the uterus, (and in very

many it does not do so until the fœtus is fully formed), this takes

place in various modes. In some it is adherent in one place by the

intervention of a fleshy substance, which in the woman is called the

“placenta,” from its resemblance to a round cake (placenta): in others

it is attached at many points by certain fleshy bodies, or “carunculæ:”

these are five in number in the hind and doe; more numerous, but of

smaller size, in the cow; and in the sheep they are in great numbers and

of various sizes. In dogs and cats these fleshy bodies entirely surround

each ovum like a girdle. A similar substance, in the hare and mole,

grows to the side of the uterus: like the human placenta, which embraces

about half the “conception,” (just as the cup does the acorn at the

commencement of its growth), it is attached by its convex aspect to the

uterus, and by its concave surface to the chorion.

With these observations premised, I shall now state my opinions on the

humours, membranes, fleshy substance of the uterus, and the distribution

of the umbilical vessels, in the order described by Fabricius.

The words δεύτερα and ὔστερα are correctly understood by Fabricius[379]

to answer to “secundæ” and “secundina” (the secundines): and by these

are implied not only the membranes, but everything which comes away from

the uterus at the last stage of parturition, or at least not long after

it, viz. the humours, membranes, fleshy substance, and umbilical

vessels.

_Of the Humours._

The doctrines inculcated on the subject of the humours, and which, as

being entertained by the ancients, Fabricius regards as certain truths

requiring no farther proof, are altogether inconsistent and false; the

doctrines, I mean, that the fluid within the amnion, wherein the fœtus

swims, consists of sweat; and that within the chorion of urine. For both

these humours are found in the “conception” before any trace of the

fœtus is visible; added to which, the fluid they call urine can be seen

before that which they regard as sweat. In truth, these humours,

especially the outer one, may be observed in unfruitful conceptions

where nothing like a fœtus is discoverable.

Women sometimes expel conceptions of this kind, analogous to the

subventaneous or wind egg. Aristotle[380] says they are called “fluxes;”

among ourselves they are termed “false conceptions,” or “slips.” An ovum

of this kind was aborted in the case of Hippocrates’s pipe-player. “In

all creatures,” we are informed on the authority of Aristotle,[381]

“which breed another within themselves, immediately on conception an

egg-like body is formed; that is to say, a body in which a fluid is

contained within a delicate membrane just like an egg with the shell

removed.” The humour in the chorion, which Fabricius and other

physicians consider to be urine, Aristotle seems to have regarded as the

seminal fluid (spermatis sive genituræ liquor). He says,[382] “when the

semen is received into the uterus, after a certain time it becomes

surrounded by a membrane, and if expulsion takes place before the fœtus

is formed, it has the appearance of an egg with the shell removed and

covered by its membrane: this membrane, moreover, is loaded with

vessels.” It is, in fact, the chorion; so called from the conflux or

multitude of veins. I have often observed ova of this kind escape in the

second and third month; they are frequently decomposed internally, and

come away gradually in the form of a leucorrhœal discharge, and thus the

hopes of the parent are lost.

Another reason why these humours cannot be sweat and urine, is, that

they exist in such abundance at the very beginning;--for the purpose, no

doubt, of preventing the body of the fœtus from coming in contact with

the adjacent parts when the mother runs, jumps, or uses violent exertion

of any kind.

Added to which, many animals never sweat at all, (and we must remember

what is said by Aristotle,[383] “that all creatures which swim, walk, or

fly,” I will add serpents and insects, whether viviparous or oviparous,

or generated spontaneously, “are produced after the same manner,”) as is

the case with birds, serpents, and fishes, which neither sweat nor pass

urine. The dog and cat also never sweat; neither in fact does any animal

in which the urinary secretion is very abundant. Besides, it is

impossible that urine can be passed before the kidneys and bladder are

formed.

Moreover, and this is the strongest argument that can be brought

forward, those humours can never be excrementitious into which so many

branches of the umbilical vessels are distributed by means of the

chorion; these vessels, in fact, in this manner taking up nourishment,

(as it were from a large reservoir,) and then conducting it to the

fœtus.

Besides what need is there of an allantois, if the fluid within the

chorion is urine? And if that in the amnion is sweat, why does Nature,

who contrives all things well, ordain that the fœtus should float about

in its own excrement? And why, too, should the mother (as is the case

with some animals) immediately after birth, so greedily devour the

excretions of its own offspring, together with the containing membranes?

Some have even observed that if the animal fails to eat up these matters

it does not give its milk freely.

Notwithstanding these arguments, it may possibly be imagined by some

that the humours which I believe serve for the nutrition of the fœtus

are excrementitious, led chiefly by the fact that they increase as the

fœtus grows larger, and in some animals are observed to exist in immense

quantities at the period of birth (at which time it might be supposed

that all alimentary matters would have been absorbed), and serve besides

other uses hardly compatible with their supposed function of nutrition.

I nevertheless most confidently assert my belief that these humours are

at the commencement destined for the nourishment of the fœtus, just as

the colliquament and albumen are in the case of the chick; but that, in

course of time, when the thinner and purer portions are absorbed, the

remainder takes on the character of excrementitious matter, but still

has its uses, and in some animals especially conduces to the safety of

the fœtus, and also greatly facilitates birth. For just as wine becomes

poor and tasteless when the spirit has evaporated; and as all excreted

matters owe their origin for the most part to what has been previously

food; so, after all the nutrient portions of the fluid contained in the

chorion have been taken up by the fœtus, the remainder become

excrementitious, and is applied to the above-mentioned uses. But all the

fluid of the amnion is usually consumed by the time of birth; so that it

is probable the fœtus seeks its exit on account of deficiency of

nutriment.

Lastly, if any other fluid is ever contained within the allantois, and

this is sometimes the case, I believe it to be unnatural. For sometimes

we see women at their delivery have an enormous flow of water, sometimes

a distinctly double flow; and this the midwives call the “by-waters.”

And so some women are seen with the abdomen immensely distended, and yet

they bring forth a little shrivelled fœtus accompanied by a vast flow of

water. Some imagine that a larger quantity of water is found with weakly

and female children, whilst stronger and male fœtuses have a smaller

share. I have often seen the waters come away in the middle of

pregnancy, and abortion not take place, the child remaining strong and

vigorous until birth. Since, then, there are naturally two collections

of fluid, one in the chorion, the other in the amnion, so it sometimes

happens that unnatural accumulations take place either in membranes of

their own, or between the duplicatures of the chorion.

_Of the Membranes._

With respect to the membranes or tunics of the uterus; as their special

office is to contain the “waters,” and as these waters are two only, it

is pretty certain that the membranes themselves do not necessarily or

usually exceed that number.

Those who enumerate three tunics are, I believe, in error, owing to the

ancients having described the same membrane at one time under the title

of “chorion,” from the concourse of veins, at another under the name of

“allantois” from its form.

Unquestionably, every “conception” is inclosed in two envelopes, just as

the brain is surrounded by its two membranes; every tree and fruit,

moreover, has its double bark; and lastly, seeds and fruits are

protected by a double covering, the outermost of which is harder and

stronger than the inner one.

Of the above-mentioned membranes, the innermost (that which contains the

colliquament or purer fluid,) is exceedingly delicate; it is called the

“amnion,” i.e. the mantle, from the way in which it is disposed round

the fœtus. The outer tunic, however, is much thicker and stronger, and

has received the name of “chorion,” “because,” says Fabricius, “a

multitude of arteries and veins are aggregated together and arranged in

it, as it were, after the manner of a chorus. Hence one of the tunics of

the eye has been denominated χοροειδὴς (choroid) from its vessels having

a similar arrangement to those in the chorion; the plexus of arteries

and veins in the ventricles of the brain has also gained its name from

the same circumstance.”

The chorion fills the whole uterus, and contains a viscid and rather

turbid fluid; whilst the placenta, or carunculæ, adhere to its outer

surface, and thus attach the “conception” to the uterus.

In the woman it is usually adherent to the amnion at its lower portion;

nor can it be separated there without difficulty. In cloven-footed

animals the chorion is of very large size, and contains a hundred times

more fluid than the amnion: this last membrane at first is scarcely as

large as a nutmeg, or broad bean, and is generally found in one or other

horn of the uterus; that, namely, in which the embryo lies.

In the woman, more particularly, the chorion is externally rough and

viscous, but internally it is smooth, slippery, and interwoven with

abundance of vessels. In the woman, also, the upper part is thick and

soft, but the lower is thinner and more membranous in character.

The placenta in the woman grows to the upper part of this membrane. In

the sheep, numerous carunculæ adhere to it at various points. In the

fallow and red deer the ovum is united to the uterus in five places

only; whilst in the mare it is in contact with the inner surface of the

uterus by an almost infinite number of points of attachment. Hence

Fabricius[384] states that in almost all viviparous animals there is a

soft, loose, porous, and thick fleshy body of a dark colour, in intimate

union with the terminations of the umbilical vessels; he compares it to

a sponge, or to the loose parenchyma of the liver or spleen; hence, too,

it was called by Galen[385] “glandular flesh;” and it is now commonly

known by the name of the uterine liver, in which the extremities of the

umbilical vessels ramify to bring nutriment from the uterus to the

fœtus.

But this fleshy substance is not found in all animals, nor at all

periods of utero-gestation; but in those alone in which the conception

adheres to the uterus; and then only when it becomes attached for the

purpose of taking up nutriment. At the commencement the “conception”

(like an egg placed within the uterus) is found in contact with every

part of the uterus, yet at no point is it adherent; but produces and

nourishes the embryo out of the humours contained within it, as I have

explained in the instance of the hen’s egg. This adhesion, or growing

together, first takes place, and the fleshy mass (constituting the bond

of union between the “conception” and the uterus) is first produced,

when the fœtus becomes perfectly formed, and, through want either of

different or more abundant nourishment, dispatches the extremities of

the umbilical vessels to the uterus, that from hence, (as plants do from

the earth by their radicles) it may absorb the nutrient juices. For in

the beginning, as I have said, when the “punctum saliens” and the blood

can alone be seen, the ramifications of the umbilical vessels are only

visible in the colliquament and amnion. When, however, the fabric of

the body is completely formed, the ramifications extend further, and are

distributed in vast numbers throughout the chorion, that from the

albuminous fluid which there exists, they may obtain nourishment for the

fœtus.

Hence it is manifest that the young of viviparous animals are at the

beginning nourished in exactly the same manner as the chick in the egg;

and that they are detained within the uterus in order that (when they

can no longer supply themselves with nutriment from their own stores)

they may form adhesions to it by means of this fleshy substance, and

receiving more abundant supplies of food from the mother, may be

nourished and made to grow.

Wherefore Fabricius has rightly observed, that in some animals the

“conception” is scarcely attached to the uterus at all. Thus the sow and

the mare have no such fleshy mode of union,--but in them the ovum or

“conception,” as in the beginning it is formed out of the humours of the

uterus, so it is nourished subsequently by the same means; just as the

ovum of the hen is supplied with aliment at the expense of the

albuminous matter without any connexion whatever with the uterus: and

thus the fœtus is furnished with aliment by the “conception” in which it

is contained, and is nourished as the chick is from the fluids of the

egg. This is a strong argument that the fœtus of viviparous animals is

no more nourished by the blood of the mother than the chick in the egg;

and moreover, that the fluid within the chorion is neither urine nor any

other excrementitious matter; but serves for the support of the fœtus.

Although, as I have before remarked, it is possible when all the

nutrient portions have been taken up, the remainder may degenerate into

excrementitious matter resembling urine. This is also clear from what I

formerly observed of the cotyledons in the deer, viz., that in these

animals the fleshy mass was of a spongy character, and constituted, like

a honeycomb, of innumerable shallow pits filled with a muco-albuminous

fluid, (a circumstance already observed by Galen[386]); and that from

this source the ramifications of the umbilical vessels absorbed the

nutriment and carried it to the fœtus: just as, in animals after their

birth, the extremities of the mesenteric vessels are spread over the

coats of the intestines and thence take up chyle.

_Of the Placenta._

In my opinion, then, the placenta and carunculæ have an office analogous

to that of the liver and mamma. The liver elaborates for the nourishment

of the body, the chyle previously taken up from the intestines: the

placenta, in like manner, prepares for the fœtus alimentary matters

which have come from the mother. The mammæ also, which are of a

glandular structure, swell with milk, and although in some animals they

are not even visible at other times, they become full and tumid at the

period of pregnancy; so, too, the placenta, a loose and fungus-like

body, abounds in an albuminous fluid, and is only to be found at the

period of pregnancy. The liver, I say, then, is the nutrient organ of

the body in which it is found; the mamma is the same of the infant, and

the placenta of the embryo. And just as the mother forms more milk from

her food than is requisite to sustain her own flesh and blood, which

milk is digested and elaborated in the mamma; so do those animals,

furnished with a placenta, supply to the fœtus nourishment which is

purified in that organ. Hence it happens that the embryo is furnished

with good or bad nutriment just as the mother takes wholesome or

unwholesome food, and in proportion as it is elaborately prepared or not

in these uterine structures. For some embryos have a more perfect

structure provided for them, such as that fleshy substance mentioned

above, which in some is altogether wanting. In some, also, the placenta

is observed to be thicker, larger, and more loaded with blood; whilst in

others it is more spongy and white, like the thymus or pancreas. But

there is not more variety found in the placenta than in the mamma or

viscera generally: for instance, the liver in some animals is red and

filled with blood, in others, as is the case with fishes and some

cachectic persons in the human species, it is of much paler hue. The

mare feeds on crude grass, and does not ruminate; the sow gorges itself

with any unclean food; and in both the placenta, or organ for perfecting

the aliment, is wanting.

Rightly then is it observed by Fabricius,[387] that “this fleshy

structure, differs much in shape, size, position, and number in

different kinds of animals. The human female has one placenta only; as

is the case with the mouse, rabbit, guinea-pig, dog, and cat:” so also

with many animals which have the toes distinct, and incisor teeth in

both jaws. “All those which have the hoof cloven and incisors in one jaw

only, have several placentæ, whether they be domesticated animals, like

the sheep, cow, and goat, or wild, as the red-deer, roe, fallow-deer,

and others of the same kind. Again, where there is only one of these

fleshy structures it either resembles a cake, (whence its name

placenta), as in the human female, rabbit, hare, mole, mouse, and

guinea-pig; or else it is like a girdle or bandage encircling the trunk

of the body, as in the dog, cat, ferret, and the like.” In some it

resembles the cup or chalice of the acorn, and surrounds the greater

part of the “conception,” as in the hare and rabbit, its convex part

adhering to the uterus, the concave looking towards the fœtus. “Again,

in animals which have this structure in the form of a cake, although the

shape is similar, the situation in which it is found is very different.

In the human female it adheres to the fundus of the uterus, and is as

far removed from the fœtus as possible, their connexion being effected

by means of long vessels. In the mouse, guinea-pig, and rabbit, it is

attached partly in the region of the loins, partly at the sides of the

thorax. Those animals which have numerous placentæ are all furnished

with incisors in one jaw only, as the sheep, cow, goat, red-deer, roe,

and the like. Yet in these some variety is observable.”

For in the sheep the carunculæ are many in number, and of different

magnitudes, the largest being of the size of a nutmeg, the smallest of

that of a pea or vetch: they are also of a rounded form and reddish hue,

with their convex portion turned towards the uterus, something in the

semblance of soft warts or nipples. “In the cow they are larger, wider,

and whiter, more like a spongy or fungoid body,” and they appear to take

their origin from the chorion. In the red or fallow-deer they are five

only in number; these spring from the walls of the uterus, and thrust

themselves inwards, exhibiting their depressions or acetabula on the

side of the fœtus. But in all animals it is observed that the carunculæ

adhere firmly to the uterus, and cannot be separated from it without

considerable difficulty, except at the period of birth; at which time

they become loosened from their attachments and fall like ripe fruit. If

they are forcibly torn from the uterus, I have observed the greater part

of the blood that escapes to flow, not from the “conception,” but from

the uterus itself.

Fabricius,[388] when discussing the mode of union between the “fleshy

substance” and the uterus, uses many arguments, but in my opinion weak

ones, to prove that the umbilical vessels anastomose with those of the

uterus: yet he seems chiefly to have done so to countenance the old

opinion once held almost by all; for he confesses that he can make no

positive assertion on the subject, “because the fleshy mass itself

stands in the way of any accurate investigation.” Yet neither reason nor

observation would lead us to believe that more anastomoses exist in the

uterus, than in the liver between the branches of the vena portæ and the

cava; or in the mamma, between the vessels which transmit blood and

those which carry milk. There may be, indeed, at places a juxtaposition

of vessels, and sometimes the insertion of one into the coats of

another; but the perfect coalition and union, described by Fabricius,

never exist. Were it so, the veins and arteries ought to be continuous;

for the vessels which bring the blood from the mother into the uterus

and carunculæ are arteries, whilst those which pass from the uterus to

the fœtus are veins, as is readily apparent; for they carry blood from

the placenta into the vena cava.

Hence the opinion of Arantius seems to me to be the true one, viz. that

the orifices of the umbilical veins are in no way continuous with the

uterine vessels. For there is a smaller number of vessels carrying blood

to the uterus than there is of veins returning it to the fœtus; and the

greater part of the roots of those terminate in the chorion. Yet

Fabricius, either from respect to the ancients, or through an envious

feeling towards Arantius, most pertinaciously holds to the old opinion.

_Of the Acetabula._

Fabricius[389] has ascertained nothing on the subject of the

“cotyledons” or “acetabula;” he gives only the various opinions of the

ancients. In the former part of my work, however, in the history of the

fœtus in the deer, I have mentioned the animals in which acetabula are

found; at the same time I described them as constituting numerous cells

of a small size scattered throughout the carunculæ, or “fleshy

substance,” and filled with an albuminous or mucilaginous fluid, like a

honeycomb full of honey.

In the deer they greatly resemble in shape the cavity of the haunch-bone

which receives the head of the thigh; hence their name in Greek,

κοτυλήδονες (little measures); and in Latin, acetabula, because they

resemble the little cups formerly brought to table filled with vinegar

for sauce.

These cavities do not exceed in size the holes in a large sponge, and a

delicate ramification of the umbilical vessels penetrates deeply into

each of them; for in them aliment is laid up for the fœtus, not indeed

constituted of blood, as Fabricius would have it, but matter of a mucous

character, and greatly resembling the thicker part of the albumen in the

egg. Hence it is clear, as I have before observed, that the fœtus in

cloven-footed animals (as indeed in all others) is not nourished by the

blood of the mother.

Aristotle’s[390] statement, “that the acetabula gradually diminish with

the growth of the fœtus, and at last disappear,” is not borne out by

experiment; for as the fœtus increases so do the carunculæ; the

acetabula at the same time become more capacious and numerous, and more

full of the albuminous matter.

If the carunculæ are pressed no blood escapes, but just as water or

honey can be squeezed from a sponge or honeycomb, so if pressure is made

a whitish fluid oozes from out of the acetabula, which then become

shrunk, white, and flaccid, and at last come to resemble a nipple, or a

large flabby wart.

Aristotle asserts, with truth, that acetabula are not found in all

animals; for they do not exist in the woman, nor (as far as I know) in

any animal which possesses a single fleshy substance or placenta. As to

the uses of the carunculæ, I believe that, like the mamma, they

elaborate not blood but a fluid resembling albumen, and that this serves

for the nourishment of the fœtus.

_Of the Umbilical Cord._

Fabricius gives an elegant description, as well as most beautiful

figures, of the umbilical vessels. “The veins,” he says,[391] “which

pass from the uterus in the direction of the fœtus are always closely

united and become larger and larger as they proceed; nor does this

mutual interlacement cease until all end in two large trunks; these

penetrate the fœtus at the umbilicus, and become one vein of great size,

which is inserted into the liver of the fœtus, and has a communication

both with the vena cava and vena portæ. In like manner the arteries

which accompany the veins, being many in number and exceedingly minute,

pass from the uterus towards the fœtus, and, gradually uniting and

increasing in size, terminate in two large trunks; these, after

penetrating the umbilicus, separate from the veins, and attaching

themselves to the lateral surface of the bladder by the intervention of

a membrane, proceed downwards on either side and become continuous with

the branches of the aorta descending to the thigh.” It must be observed,

however, that this description of Fabricius applies only to the

umbilical vessels of the human fœtus, and not to the young of every

animal. Nor even does it hold in the case of the human fœtus except when

it is full grown; for at the beginning the arteries make little show,

and are so small as to require the eyes of a lynx to see them; nor

afterwards indeed are they distinguishable except by their pulsation: in

other particulars they resemble veins. Since then, as I have elsewhere

shown, the very small branches of arteries do not pulsate, in so far as

the eye is concerned, there can be no difference between them and veins.

The arteries, I say, at this time are so fine and minute, that they are

woven, as it were, like the most delicate threads, into the tissues of

the veins, or rather in some obscure manner insinuate themselves into

them; hence they almost entirely elude the sight. But all the veins, by

a retrograde movement, unite their twigs and terminate in one trunk like

the branches of a tree, in the same manner as the mesenteric veins, all

of which terminate in the vena portæ.

Near the embryo [the umbilical veins] are divided into two trunks, but

when entered within it they constitute one umbilical vein, which ends in

the vena cava, near the right auricle of the heart, and passes through

the liver, entering the vena portæ; giving off no branches besides until

it leaves the convex portion of the liver by a very large orifice. So

that if the vena cava is opened from the right auricle downwards and

emptied of blood, three apertures may be seen close to each other; one

is the entrance of the vena cava descendens, the second that of the

hepatic vein, which ramifies throughout the convex portion of the liver,

and the third is the origin of the umbilical vein. Hence it is quite

clear that the origin of the veins is by no means to be looked for in

the liver; inasmuch as the orifice of the vena cava descendens is much

larger than the hepatic branch, which is indeed equalled in size by the

umbilical vein. For the branches are not said to be the origin of their

trunk; but where the trunk is greatest there the origin of the veins is

to be looked for, and this is the case at the entrance of the right

ventricle: here, then, the origin of all veins, and the storehouse of

the blood must be placed.

To return to the umbilical vessels, which are not subdivided in the same

way in all animals; for in some two or more branches of veins are found

within the body of the fœtus,--some of which pass through the liver,

whilst others join the portal and mesenteric veins. In the human fœtus,

at a distance of three or four fingers’ breadth from the umbilicus, the

trunks of the arteries and veins are involved together in a complicated

manner, (as if one were to twist several waxen tapers in the form of a

stick,) and are besides covered and held together by a thick gelatinous

membrane. This cord passes on towards the chorion, and when arrived at

the concave portion of the placenta and the inner surface of the

chorion, splits into innumerable branches; these divide again, and

constitute the means by which the nutrient matter is taken up, as by

rootlets, and distributed to the fœtus. The veins of the cord are marked

at various places by knots or varices, resembling vesicles filled with

blood; this is a contrivance of nature to prevent the blood rushing too

violently to the fœtus. From the number of these knots superstitious

midwives are accustomed to predict the number of the future offspring;

and if none can be seen at all they pronounce that the woman will be

ever after barren: they also absurdly prophesy by the distance between

the knots about the interval to take place between the birth of each

child, and also of its sex from their colour.

A like arrangement of the umbilical vessels is found in almost all

fœtuses furnished with a single placenta, as in the dog, mouse, and

others; but in these the cord is shorter and less convoluted. In the ox,

sheep, red-deer, fallow-deer, hog, and others, in which the nutrient

material is not supplied from one fleshy mass or placenta, but from

several, the umbilical vessels are distributed in a different manner.

The branches and extremities of these vessels are not only disseminated

through the fleshy substance, but still more and chiefly through the

membrane of the chorion itself by means of the most delicate fibres;

exactly in the same way as the vessels are distributed in the human

fœtus, without the aid of the cord, before the “conception” adheres to

the uterus. Hence it is plain that the embryo does not derive all its

nourishment from the placenta, but receives a considerable portion of it

from the fluid contained in the chorion.

As to the uses of the umbilical vessels, I cannot agree with Fabricius,

for he imagines that all the blood is supplied to the fœtus from the

uterus by means of the veins, and that the vital spirits are transmitted

from the mother by the arteries. He also asserts that no part of the

fœtus performs any common function, but that each individual portion

looks only to itself, how it may be nourished, grow, and be preserved.

In like manner, because he has found no nerve in the umbilical cord, he

refuses to allow sensation or voluntary motion to the fœtus. Just as if

the uterus or placenta of the mother were the heart or first source

whence these functions are derived to the fœtus, and whence heat flows

in and is distributed through all its parts. All these are manifest

errors. For the human fœtus, even before the completion of the fourth

month, (in some animals sooner,) in no obscure manner moves, rolls

about, and kicks, especially if it suffer from cold, heat, or any

external source of inconvenience. Moreover, the “punctum saliens”

(whilst yet the heart is not) moves to and fro, with an evident

pulsation, and distributes blood and spirits; and this part, as I have

before stated, if languid and nearly extinct through cold, will, if

warmth be applied, again be restored and live. In the Cæsarean section,

also, it is quite clear that the life of the embryo does not immediately

depend upon the mother, and that the spirits do not proceed from her;

for I have often seen the fœtus extracted alive from the uterus when the

mother has been dead some hours. I have also known the rabbit and hare

survive when extracted from the uterus of the dead mother. Besides, in a

tedious labour we learn whether the infant is alive or not by the

pulsation of the umbilical arteries; and it is certain that these

arteries receive their impulse from the heart of the fœtus and not of

the mother, for the rhythm of the two differs: this can be easily

ascertained if one hand is applied to the wrist of the mother and the

other to the umbilical cord. Nay, in the Cæsarean section, when the

embryo is still enveloped in the chorion, I have often found the

umbilical arteries pulsating, and the fœtus lively, even when the mother

was dead and her limbs stiffened. It is not, therefore, true that the

“spirits” pass from the mother to the fœtus through the arteries; nor is

it more so that the umbilical or fœtal vessels anastomose with those of

the uterus. The fœtus has a proper life of its own, and possesses

pulsating arteries filled with blood and “spirits,” long before the

“conception,” in which it is formed and dwells, is attached to the

uterus; just as it is with the chick in the egg.

In my treatise on the Circulation of the Blood I have shown the uses of

the arteries, both in the fœtus and in the adult, to be very different

from what is generally supposed, and my views receive confirmation from

the subject now under consideration.

In truth, the “secundines” are part of the “conception,” and depend upon

it, borrowing thence their life and faculty of growth. For, just as in

the mesentery, the blood is propelled to the intestines by the branches

of the cœliac and mesenteric arteries, and returns thence by means of

the veins to the liver and heart, together with the chyle, so in like

manner do the umbilical arteries carry the blood to the secundines;

which blood, together with the nutrient fluid, is brought back by the

veins to the fœtus. Hence it is that these arteries do not proceed

immediately from the heart, as if they were the principal vessels, but

take their origin from the arteries of the lower limbs, as being of

inferior rank, use, and magnitude.

Adrian Spigelius lately published a book entitled ‘On the Formation of

the Fœtus’ (de Formato Fœtu); in which he treats of the uses of the

umbilical arteries, and proves, by powerful arguments, that the fœtus

does not receive vital “spirits” from the mother through the arteries;

he also answers fully the arguments on the other side. He could also

have shown by the same arguments that neither is the blood transferred

to the fœtus from the vessels of the mother by means of the branches of

the umbilical veins; this is especially clear from the case of the hen’s

egg, and also of the Cæsarean section. In truth, if heat and life flow

to the blood from the mother, should she die the child must straightway

be destroyed also, for the same fatality must attach to both; nay, the

child must be the first to perish; for as dissolution approaches, the

subordinate parts languish and grow chill before the principal ones, and

so the heart fails last of all. The blood, I mean of the fœtus, would be

the first to lose its heat and become unfit to perform its functions

were it derived from the uterus, since the uterus would be deprived of

all vital heat before the heart.

ON CONCEPTION.

Fabricius has indeed recounted many wonderful things on the subject of

parturition; for my own part, I think there is more to admire and marvel

at in conception. It is a matter, in truth, full of obscurity; yet will

I venture to put forth a few things--rather though as questions proposed

for solution--that I may not appear to subvert other men’s opinions

only, without bringing forward anything of my own. Yet what I shall

state I wish not to be taken as if I thought it a voice from an oracle,

or desired to gain the assent of others by violence; I claim, however,

that liberty which I willingly yield to others, the permission, viz. in

subjects of difficulty to put forward as true such things as appear to

be probable until proved to be manifestly false.

It is to the uterus that the business of conception is chiefly

intrusted: without this structure and its functions conception would be

looked for in vain. But since it is certain that the semen of the male

does not so much as reach the cavity of the uterus, much less continue

long there, and that it carries with it a fecundating power by a kind of

contagious property, (not because it is then and there in actual

contact, or operates, but because it previously has been in contact);

the woman, after contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to

receive influence, and to become fecundated without the co-operation of

any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the

magnet is endowed with its powers and can attract other iron to itself.

When this virtue is once received the woman exercises a plastic power of

generation, and produces a being after her own image; not otherwise than

the plant, which we see endowed with the forces of both sexes.

Yet it is a matter of wonder where this faculty abides after intercourse

is completed, and before the formation of the ovum or “conception.” To

what is this active power of the male committed? is it to the uterus

solely, or to the whole woman? or is it to the uterus primarily and to

the woman secondarily? or, lastly, does the woman conceive in the womb,

as we see by the eye and think by the brain?

For although the woman conceiving after intercourse sometimes produces

no fœtus, yet we know that phenomena occur which clearly indicate that

conception has really taken place, although without result. Over-fed

bitches, which admit the dog without fecundation following, are

nevertheless observed to be sluggish about the time they should have

whelped, and to bark as they do when their time is at hand, also to

steal away the whelps from another bitch, to tend and lick them, and

also to fight fiercely for them. Others have milk or colostrum, as it is

called, in their teats, and are, moreover, subject to the diseases of

those which have actually whelped; the same thing is seen in hens which

cluck at certain times, although they have no eggs on which to sit. Some

birds also, as pigeons, if they have admitted the male, although they

lay no eggs at all, or only barren ones, are found equally sedulous in

building their nests.

The virtue which proceeds from the male in coitu has such prodigious

power of fecundation, that the whole woman, both in mind and body,

undergoes a change. And although it is the uterus made ready for this,

on which the first influences are impressed, and from which virtue and

strength are diffused throughout the body, the question still remains,

how it is that the power thus communicated remains attached to the

uterus? is it to the whole uterus or only to a part of it? nothing is to

be found within it after coitus, for the semen in a short time either

falls out or evaporates, and the blood, its circle completed, returns

from the uterus by the vessels.

Again, what is this preparation or maturity of the uterus which eagerly

demands the fecundating seed? whence does it proceed? Certain it is,

unless the uterus be ready for coition every attempt at fecundation is

vain; nay, in some animals, at no other time is the male admitted. It

happens occasionally, I allow, that this maturity arrives earlier in

some from the solicitations of the male animal; it is itself, however,

a purely natural result, just as is the ripening of the fruit in trees.

What these changes are I will now recount, as I have found them by

observation.

The uterus first appears more thick and fleshy; then its inner surface,

the future residence, that is, of the “conception,” becomes softer, and

resembles in smoothness and delicacy the ventricles of the brain; this I

have already described in the deer and other cloven-footed tribes. But

in the dog, cat, and other multiparous and digitated animals, the horns

of the uterus--clearly corresponding to the round tubes of the woman

[Fallopian tubes], the appendices of the intestines in birds, or the

ureters in man--exhibit little protuberances at certain intervals, which

swell up and become extremely soft; these, after intercourse, appear to

open themselves, (as I have observed in deer;) from them the first white

fluid transudes into the uterus, and out of this the “conception,” or

ovum, is formed. In this way the uterus, by means of the male, (like

fruit by the summer’s heat,) is brought to the highest pitch of

maturity, and becomes impregnated.

But since there are no manifest signs of conception before the uterus

begins to relax, and the white fluid or slender threads (like the

spider’s web) constituting the “primordium” of the future “conception,”

or ovum, shows itself; and since the substance of the uterus, when ready

to conceive, is very like the structure of the brain, why should we not

suppose that the function of both is similar, and that there is excited

by coitus within the uterus a something identical with, or at least

analogous to, an “imagination” (phantasma) or a “desire” (appetitus) in

the brain, whence comes the generation or procreation of the ovum? For

the functions of both are termed “conceptions,” and both, although the

primary sources of every action throughout the body, are immaterial, the

one of natural or organic, the other of animal actions; the one (viz.

the uterus) the first cause and beginning of every action which conduces

to the generation of the animal, the other (viz. the brain) of every

action done for its preservation. And just as a “desire” arises from a

conception of the brain, and this conception springs from some external

object of desire, so also from the male, as being the more perfect

animal, and, as it were, the most natural object of desire, does the

natural (organic) conception arise in the uterus, even as the animal

conception does in the brain.

From this desire, or conception, it results that the female produces an

offspring like the father. For just as we, from the conception of the

“form” or “idea” in the brain, fashion in our works a form resembling

it, so, in like manner, the “idea,” or “form,” of the father existing in

the uterus generates an offspring like himself with the help of the

formative faculty, impressing, however, on its work its own immaterial

“form.” In the same way art, which in the brain is the εἶδος or “form”

of the future work, produces, when in operation, its like, and begets it

out of “matter.” So too the painter, by means of conception, pictures to

himself a face, and by imitating this internal conception of the brain

carries it out into act; so also the builder constructs his house

according to previous conception. The same thing takes place in every

other action and artificial production. Thus, what education effects in

the brain, viz. art, with its analogue does the coitus of the male endow

the uterus, viz. the plastic art; hence many similar or dissimilar

fœtuses are produced at the same coitus. For if the productions and

first conceptions of art (the mere imitations of nature) are in this way

formed in the brain, how much more probable is it that copies

(exemplaria) of animal generation and conception should in like manner

be produced in the uterus?

And since Nature, all of whose works are wonderful and divine, has

devised an organ of this kind, viz. the brain, by the virtue and

sensitive faculty of which the conceptions of the rational soul exist,

such as the desires and the arts, the first principles and causes of so

many and such various works, of which man, by means of the impulsive

faculty of the brain, is by imitation the author; why should we not

suppose that the same Nature, who in the uterus has constructed an organ

no less wonderful, and adapted it by means of a similar structure to

perform all that appertains to conception, has destined it for a similar

or at least an analogous function, and intended an organ altogether

similar for a similar use? For as the skilful artificer accomplishes his

works by ingeniously adapting his instruments to each, so that from the

substance and shape of these instruments it is easy to judge of their

use and application, with no less certainty than we have been taught by

Aristotle[392] to recognize the nature of animals from the structure and

arrangement of their bodily organs; and as physiognomy instructs us to

judge of a man’s disposition and character from the shape of his face

and features, what should prevent us from supposing that where the same

structure exists there is the same function implanted?

But it is so unfairly ordered that, when customary and familiar matters

come to be debated, this very familiarity lessens their importance and

our wonder; whilst things of much less moment, because they are novel

and rare, appear to us far greater objects of marvel. Whoever has

pondered with himself how the brain of the artist, or rather the artist

by means of his brain, pictures to the life things which are not present

to him, but which he has once seen; also in what manner birds immured in

cages recall to mind the spring, and chant exactly the songs they had

learned the preceding summer, although meanwhile they had never

practised them; again, and this is more strange, how the bird

artistically builds its nest, the copy of which it had never seen, and

this not from memory or habit, but by means of an imaginative faculty

(phantasia), and how the spider weaves its web, without either copy or

brain, solely by the help of this imaginative power; whosoever, I say,

ponders these things, will not, I think, regard it as absurd or

monstrous, that the woman should be impregnated by the conception of a

general immaterial “idea,” and become the artificer of generation.

I know well that some censorious persons will laugh at this,--men who

believe nothing true but what they think so themselves. Yet this that I

do is the practice of philosophers, who, when they cannot clearly

comprehend how a thing really is brought to pass, devise some mode for

it in accordance with the other works of nature, and as near as possible

to what is true. And indeed all those opinions which we now regard as of

the greatest weight, were at the beginning mere figments and

imaginations, until confirmed by experiments addressed to the senses,

and made credible by a knowledge of their positive causes.

Aristotle[393] says “that philosophers are in some sort lovers of

fables, seeing that fable is made up of marvels.” And indeed men were

first led to cultivate philosophy from wondering at what they saw. For

my own part, then, when I see nothing left in the uterus after

intercourse to which I can ascribe the principle of generation, any more

than there is in the brain anything discoverable after sensation and

experience, which are the prime sources of art, and when I find the

structure of both alike, I have devised this fable. Let learned and

ingenious men consider of it, let the supercilious reject it, and those

who are peevish and scoffing laugh if they please.

Since, then, nothing can be apprehended by the senses in the uterus

after coition, and since it is necessary that there be something to

render the female fruitful, and as this is probably not material, it

remains for us to take refuge in the notion of a mere conception and of

“species without matter” (species sine materiâ), and imagine that the

same thing happens here as every one allows takes place in the brain,

unless indeed there be some one “whom the gods have moulded of better

clay,” and made fit to discover some other efficient cause besides any

of those enumerated.

Some philosophers of our time have returned to the old opinion about

atoms, and so imagine that this generative contagion, as indeed all

others, proceeds from the subtile emanations of the semen of the male,

which rise like odorous particles, and gain an entrance into the uterus

at the period of intercourse. Others invoke to their aid incorporeal

spirits, such as demiurgi, angels, and demons. Others regard it as a

process of fermentation. Others devise other theories. I pray,

therefore, a place for this conjecture of mine until something certain

is established in the matter.

Many observations have been made by me which would easily overthrow the

opinions I have mentioned, so easy is it to say what a thing is not

rather than what it is; this is not, however, the place to introduce

them, although elsewhere it is my intention to do so. On the present

occasion I shall only observe, if that which is called by the common

name of “contagion,” as arising from the contact of the spermatic fluid

in intercourse, and which remains in the woman (without the actual

presence of the semen) as the efficient of the future offspring--if, I

say, this contagion (whether it be atoms, odorous particles,

fermentation, or anything else) is not of the nature of any corporeal

substance, it follows of necessity that it is incorporeal. And if on

further inquiry it should appear that it is neither spirit nor demon,

nor soul, nor any part of the soul, nor anything having a soul, as I

believe can be proved by various arguments and experiments, what

remains, since I am unable myself to conjecture anything besides, nor

has any one imagined aught else even in his dreams, but to confess

myself at a stand-still? “For whoever,” says Aristotle,[394] “doubts and

wonders, confesses his ignorance; therefore if to escape the imputation

of ignorance, ingenious men have turned to philosophy, it is clear they

follow their pursuit for the sake of knowledge, and not from any other

motive.”

It must not, then, be imputed to me for blame, if, eager for knowledge,

and approaching untrodden ground, I have presented aught which at first

sight may appear made up or fabulous. For as everything is not to be

received at once with an unthinking credulity, so that which has been

long and painfully considered must not be straightway rejected, even

although it fail to catch the eye of the quick-sighted. Aristotle

himself wrote a book, ‘De Mirabilibus audits,’ on hearsay wonders; and

elsewhere he says,[395] “We must not only thank those in whose opinions

we acquiesce, but those also who have said aught (to the purpose)

although superficially. For these bring in something to the common

stock, in this, that they exercise and train our habits. For if

Timotheus had not existed, we should have lost much music. Yet if

Phrynis had not been we should have had no Timotheus. So is it with

those who have laid down any truth. For we have received some opinions

from certain philosophers, yet were there others to whom these owed

their existence.”

Influenced, then, by the example and authority of so great a man, and

not to appear resolute only to subvert the doctrines of others, I have

preferred proposing a fanciful opinion rather than none at all, playing

in this the part of Phrynis to Timotheus, my object being to shake off

the sloth of the age we live in, to rouse the intellects of the

studious, and, rather than that the diligent investigator of nature

should accuse me of indolence, to bid him laugh at my ill-formed and

crude notions.

In truth, there is no proposition more magnificent to investigate or

more useful to ascertain than this: How are all things formed by an

“univocal” agent? How does the like ever generate the like? And this not

only in productions of art (for so house builds house, face designs

face, and image forms image), but also in things relating to the mind,

for mind begets mind, opinion is the source of opinion. Democritus with

his atoms, and Eudoxus with his chief good which he placed in pleasure,

impregnated Epicurus; the four elements of Empedocles, Aristotle; the

doctrines of the ancient Thebans, Pythagoras and Plato; geometry,

Euclid. By this same law the son is born like his parents, and virtues

which ennoble and vices which degrade a race are sometimes passed on to

descendants through a long series of years. Some diseases propagate

their kind, as lepra, gout, syphilis, and others. But why do I speak of

diseases, when the moles, warts, and cicatrices of the progenitor are

sometimes repeated in the descendant after many generations?[396] “Every

fourth birth,” says Pliny,[397] “the mark of the origin of the Dacian

family is repeated on the arm.” Why may not the thoughts, opinions, and

manners now prevalent, many years hence return again, after an

intermediate period of neglect? For the divine mind of the Eternal

Creator, which is impressed on all things, creates the image of itself

in human conceptions.

Having, therefore, overcome some difficulties relating to the subject, I

feel a greater desire to enter into it a little more closely, and this

with two objects in view--first, that what I have hitherto treated

cursorily may seem to carry with it a greater weight of probability; and

secondly, to stir up the intellects of the studious to search more

deeply into so obscure a subject.

To illustrate the matter, let A stand for the fecundated egg (the

“matter” that is of the future chick), which is alterable or

convertible into the chick, and is in fact the chicken in posse. Let B

be that which fecundates the egg, and thus distinguishes it from an

unfruitful egg, i. e. the “efficient cause” of the chick, or that which

puts the egg in motion, and converts it into a chick. And let C be the

chick, or “final cause,” for the sake of which both the egg and that

which fecundates the egg exist, the actual chick, namely, or “reason”

why the chick is.

Now we take for granted, as demonstrated by Aristotle,[398] that every

prime mover is “combined with” that which is moved by it. And these

things are more particularly said by him to be “together” which are

generated or produced at the same moment of time: thus that which moves

and that which is moved are actually together, and where one is there

the other is also; for it is evident that when the effect is present the

cause must be so too.

Whenever, then, A (i. e. the fecundated egg) is actually in being, B (i.

e. the internal moving and “efficient” or fecundating cause) is also

actually in being. But when B is actually in being, C also (i. e. the

immaterial “form” of the chick) must, at least in some sort, be existing

too. For B is the internal efficient cause of the chick, that, namely,

which alters A (the egg) into C (the “reason” why the chick is). Since,

then, everything which moves coexists with that which is moved by it,

and every cause with its effect, it follows that C coexists with B; for

the “final cause,” both in nature and art, is primary to all other

causes, since it moves, and is not itself moved; but the “efficient”

moves, because it is impelled by the “final cause.” There inheres, in

some way or other, in every “efficient cause” a ratio finis (a final

cause), and by this the efficient, co-operating with Providence, is

moved.

The authority of Aristotle is clearly on my side: “That,” he says,[399]

“appears to hold the chief place among natural causes which we signify

under this expression, ‘cujus gratiâ’--for whose sake. For this is the

‘reason;’ but the ‘reason’ is the chief thing, as well in artificial as

in natural subjects. For when a physician explains what health is,

either by definition or description, or a workman a house, he is

accustomed to give the reasons and causes of what he does, and adds why

he does it; although that cause, ‘cujus gratiâ,’ and the reason ‘for the

sake of the good and fair,’ are joined rather to the works of nature

than to those of art.”

“The end,” he elsewhere says,[400] “is this ‘cujus gratiâ’ (for whose

sake), as health is the thing for the sake of which we walk. For why

does a man walk? We answer, for the sake of his health; and when we have

thus said, we think we have given a ‘cause;’ and whatever else is

further interposed, by means of another agent, is done for the sake of

this end, as dieting, or purging, or drugs, or instruments, are all for

the sake of health; for all these are for the sake of the end.” Again,

“It is our business always to seek the primary cause of everything. For

instance, a man builds a house because he is a builder, but he is a

builder by reason of the art of building; this then (the art) is a prior

cause; and so in all things.” Hence it is that he asserts[401] “that the

cause which first moves, and in which the ‘reason’ and ‘form’ lie, is

greater and more divine than the ‘material cause.’”

In all natural generation, therefore, both the “matter” out of which and

the “efficient cause” by which (namely, A, the thing which is moved, and

B, the thing moving) are alike for the sake of the animal begotten or to

be begotten; for that which moves and is not itself moved, viz. C, is in

(inest) both. For both those (viz. A and B) are at the same time capable

of motion, and are moreover moved, viz. the thing fecundating, B, (which

both moves and is moved) and the thing fecundated, A, the “matter,” viz.

or ovum, which is moved and changed only. Wherefore if no moveable thing

is actually moved, unless the thing which moves is present, so neither

will “matter” be moved, nor the “efficient” effect anything, unless the

first moving cause be in some way present; and this is the “form” or

“species” which is without matter, and is the prime cause. “For the

efficient and generating,” according to Aristotle,[402] “in so far as

they are so, belong to that which is effected and generated.” The

following syllogism, therefore, may be framed out of these first and

necessary predicates:

Whenever B is actually in existence, C also is actually in existence (i.

e. moving in some way).

Whenever A is actually in existence, B is also in actual existence.

Therefore whenever A is in actual existence, C is also in actual

existence.

Natural and artificial generation take place after the same manner.[403]

Both are instituted for the sake of something further, and by a kind of

providence both direct themselves to a proposed end;--both too are first

moved by some “form” conceived without matter, and are the products of

this conception. The brain is the organ of one kind of conception (for

in the soul, the organ of which is the brain, art, without the

intervention of matter, is the “reason” or first cause of the work), the

uterus or ovum of the other.

The “conception,” therefore, of the uterus or the ovum resembles, at

least in some sort, the conception of the brain itself, and in a similar

way does the “end” inhere in both. For the “species” or “form” of the

chick is in the uterus or ovum without the intervention of matter, just

as the “reason” of his work is in the artist, e. g. the “reason” of the

house in the brain of the builder.

But since the phrase “to be in” is perhaps equivocal, and things are

said to be coexistent in various senses, I affirm, further, and say,

that the “species” and immaterial “form” of the future chick are, in

some sort, the cause of the impregnation or fecundation of the uterus,

because after intercourse no corporeal substance can be found within

that organ.

But how this immaterial cause, this first principle, exists alike in the

uterus and brain, or how the conceptions of the brain and uterus,

answering to art and nature, resemble or differ from each other, and in

what way the thing which fecundates (viz. the internal efficient cause

whereby the animal is generated) exists alike in the male and his semen

and in the woman and her uterus--in the egg also, the mixed work of both

sexes--and wherein their differences consist, I shall subsequently

attempt to explain when I treat generally of the generation of animals

(as well of those creatures which are produced by metamorphosis, viz.

insects, as of spontaneously generated beings, in whose ova or

“primordia,” as in all other seeds, the “species” or immaterial “form”

plainly dwells, the moving principle, as it were, of those things which

are to be generated), and when I speak of the soul and its affections,

and how art, memory, and experience are to be regarded as the

conceptions of the brain alone.

THE ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION

OF THE BODY OF

THOMAS PARR,

WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO YEARS;

MADE BY

WILLIAM HARVEY,

OTHERS OF THE KING’S PHYSICIANS BEING PRESENT,

ON THE 16TH OF NOVEMBER, THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTHDAY

OF HER SERENE HIGHNESS

HENRIETTA MARIA, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE AND IRELAND.

[This account first appeared in the work of Dr. Bett, entitled: “De Ortu

et Natura Sanguinis,” 8vo. London, 1669, the MS. having been presented

to Bett by Mr. Michael Harvey, nephew of the author, with whom Bett

informs us he was on terms of intimacy.--ED.]

ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR.

Thomas Parr, a poor countryman, born near Winnington, in the county of

Salop, died on the 14th of November, in the year of grace 1635, after

having lived one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months, and

survived nine princes. This poor man, having been visited by the

illustrious Earl of Arundel when he chanced to have business in these

parts, (his lordship being moved to the visit by the fame of a thing so

incredible,) was brought by him from the country to London; and, having

been most kindly treated by the earl both on the journey and during a

residence in his own house, was presented as a remarkable sight to his

Majesty the King.

Having made an examination of the body of this aged individual, by

command of his Majesty, several of whose principal physicians were

present, the following particulars were noted:

The body was muscular, the chest hairy, and the hair on the fore-arms

still black; the legs, however, were without hair, and smooth.

The organs of generation were healthy, the penis neither retracted nor

extenuated, nor the scrotum filled with any serous infiltration, as

happens so commonly among the decrepid; the testes, too, were sound and

large; so that it seemed not improbable that the common report was true,

viz. that he did public penance under a conviction for incontinence,

after he had passed his hundredth year; and his wife, whom he had

married as a widow in his hundred-and-twentieth year, did not deny that

he had intercourse with her after the manner of other husbands with

their wives, nor until about twelve years back had he ceased to embrace

her frequently.

The chest was broad and ample; the lungs, nowise fungous, adhered,

especially on the right side, by fibrous bands to the ribs. They were

much loaded with blood, as we find them in cases of peripneumony, so

that until the blood was squeezed out they looked rather blackish.

Shortly before his death I had observed that the face was livid, and he

suffered from difficult breathing and orthopnœa. This was the reason why

the axillæ and chest continued to retain their heat long after his

death: this and other signs that present themselves in cases of death

from suffocation were observed in the body.

We judged, indeed, that he had died suffocated, through inability to

breathe, and this view was confirmed by all the physicians present, and

reported to the King. When the blood was expressed, and the lungs were

wiped, their substance was beheld of a white and almost milky hue.

The heart was large, and thick, and fibrous, and contained a

considerable quantity of adhering fat, both in its circumference and

over its septum. The blood in the heart, of a black colour, was dilute,

and scarcely coagulated; in the right ventricle alone some small clots

were discovered.

In raising the sternum, the cartilages of the ribs were not found harder

or converted into bone in any greater degree than they are in ordinary

men; on the contrary, they were soft and flexible.

The intestines were perfectly sound, fleshy, and strong, and so was the

stomach: the small intestines presented several constrictions, like

rings, and were muscular. Whence it came that, by day or night,

observing no rules or regular times for eating, he was ready to discuss

any kind of eatable that was at hand; his ordinary diet consisting of

sub-rancid cheese, and milk in every form, coarse and hard bread, and

small drink, generally sour whey. On this sorry fare, but living in his

home, free from care, did this poor man attain to such length of days.

He even ate something about midnight shortly before his death.

The kidneys were bedded in fat, and in themselves sufficiently healthy;

on their anterior aspects, however, they contained several small watery

abscesses or serous collections, one of which, the size of a hen’s egg,

containing a yellow fluid in a proper cyst, had made a rounded

depression in the substance of the kidney. To this some were disposed to

ascribe the suppression of urine under which the old man had laboured

shortly before his death; whilst others, and with greater show of

likelihood, ascribed it to the great regurgitation of serum upon the

lungs.

There was no appearance of stone either in the kidneys or bladder.

The mesentery was loaded with fat, and the colon, with the omentum,

which was likewise fat, was attached to the liver, near the fundus of

the gall-bladder; in like manner the colon was adherent from this point

posteriorly with the peritoneum.

The viscera were healthy; they only looked somewhat white externally, as

they would have done had they been parboiled; internally they were (like

the blood,) of the colour of dark gore.

The spleen was very small, scarcely equalling one of the kidneys in

size.

All the internal parts, in a word, appeared so healthy, that had nothing

happened to interfere with the old man’s habits of life, he might

perhaps have escaped paying the debt due to nature for some little time

longer.

The cause of death seemed fairly referrible to a sudden change in the

non-naturals, the chief mischief being connected with the change of air,

which through the whole course of life had been inhaled of perfect

purity,--light, cool, and mobile, whereby the præcordia and lungs were

more freely ventilated and cooled; but in this great advantage, in this

grand cherisher of life this city is especially destitute; a city whose

grand characteristic is an immense concourse of men and animals, and

where ditches abound, and filth and offal lie scattered about, to say

nothing of the smoke engendered by the general use of sulphureous coal

as fuel, whereby the air is at all times rendered heavy, but much more

so in the autumn than at any other season. Such an atmosphere could not

have been found otherwise than insalubrious to one coming from the open,

sunny and healthy region of Salop; it must have been especially so to

one already aged and infirm.

And then for one hitherto used to live on food unvaried in kind, and

very simple in its nature, to be set at a table loaded with variety of

viands, and tempted not only to eat more than wont, but to partake of

strong drink, it must needs fall out that the functions of all the

natural organs would become deranged. Whence the stomach at length

failing, and the excretions long retained, the work of concoction

proceeding languidly, the liver getting loaded, the blood stagnating in

the veins, the spirits frozen, the heart, the source of life, oppressed,

the lungs infarcted, and made impervious to the ambient air, the general

habit rendered more compact, so that it could no longer exhale or

perspire--no wonder that the soul, little content with such a prison,

took its flight.

The brain was healthy, very firm and hard to the touch; hence, shortly

before his death, although he had been blind for twenty years, he heard

extremely well, understood all that was said to him, answered

immediately to questions, and had perfect apprehension of any matter in

hand; he was also accustomed to walk about, slightly supported between

two persons. His memory, however, was greatly impaired, so that he

scarcely recollected anything of what had happened to him when he was a

young man, nothing of public incidents, or of the kings or nobles who

had made a figure, or of the wars or troubles of his earlier life, or of

the manners of society, or of the prices of things--in a word, of any of

the ordinary incidents which men are wont to retain in their memories.

He only recollected the events of the last few years. Nevertheless, he

was accustomed, even in his hundred and thirtieth year, to engage

lustily in every kind of agricultural labour, whereby he earned his

bread, and he had even then the strength required to thrash the corn.

LETTERS.

LETTER I.

_To Caspar Hofmann, M.D. Published at Nurenberg, in the ‘Spicilegium

Illustrium Epistolarum ad Casp. Hofmannum.’_

Your opinion of me, my most learned Hofmann, so candidly given, and of

the motion and circulation of the blood, is extremely gratifying to me;

and I rejoice that I have been permitted to see and to converse with a

man so learned as yourself, whose friendship I as readily embrace as I

cordially return it. But I find that you have been pleased first

elaborately to inculpate me, and then to make me pay the penalty, as

having seemed to you “to have impeached and condemned Nature of folly

and error; and to have imputed to her the character of a most clumsy and

inefficient artificer, in suffering the blood to become recrudescent,

and making it return again and again to the heart in order to be

reconcocted, to grow effete as often in the general system; thus

uselessly spoiling the perfectly-made blood, merely to find her in

something to do.” But where or when anything of the kind was ever said,

or even imagined by me--by me, who, on the contrary, have never lost an

opportunity of expressing my admiration of the wisdom and aptness and

industry of Nature,--as you do not say, I am not a little disturbed to

find such things charged upon me by a man of sober judgment like

yourself. In my printed book, I do, indeed, assert that the blood is

incessantly moving out from the heart by the arteries to the general

system, and returning from this by the veins back to the heart, and

with such an ebb and flow, in such mass and quantity that it must

necessarily move in some way in a circuit. But if you will be kind

enough to refer to my eighth and ninth chapters you will find it stated

in so many words that I have purposely omitted to speak of the

concoction of the blood, and of the causes of this motion and

circulation, especially of the final cause. So much I have been anxious

to say, that I might purge myself in the eyes of a learned and much

respected man,--that I might feel absolved of the infamy of meriting

such censure. And I beg you to observe, my learned, my impartial friend,

if you would see with your own eyes the things I affirm in respect of

the circulation,--and this is the course which most beseems an

anatomist,--that I engage to comply with your wishes, whenever a fit

opportunity is afforded; but if you either decline this, or care not by

dissection to investigate the subject for yourself, let me beseech you,

I say, not to vilipend the industry of others, nor charge it to them as

a crime; do not derogate from the faith of an honest man, not altogether

foolish nor insane, who has had experience in such matters for a long

series of years.

Farewell, and beware! and act by me, as I have done by you; for what you

have written I receive as uttered in all candour and kindness. Be sure,

in writing to me in return, that you are animated by the same

sentiments.

Nürnberg, May 20th, 1636.

LETTER II.

_To Paul Marquard Slegel, of Hamburg._

I congratulate you much, most learned sir, on your excellent commentary,

in which you have replied in a very admirable manner to Riolanus, the

distinguished anatomist, and, as you say, formerly your teacher:

invincible truth has, indeed, taught the scholar to vanquish the master.

I was myself preparing a sponge for his most recent arguments; but

intent upon my work ‘On the Generation of Animals’ (which, but just

come forth, I send to you), I have not had leisure to produce it. And

now I rather rejoice in the silence, as from your supplement I perceive

that it has led you to come forward with your excellent reflections, to

the common advantage of the world of letters. For I see that in your

most ornate book (I speak without flattery), you have skilfully and

nervously confuted all his machinations against the circulation, and

successfully thrown down the scaffolding of his more recent opinions. I

am, therefore, but little solicitous about labouring at any ulterior

answer. Many things might, indeed, be adduced in confirmation of the

truth, and several calculated to shed clearer light on the art of

medicine; but of these we shall perhaps see further by and by.

Meantime, as Riolanus uses his utmost efforts to oppose the passage of

the blood into the left ventricle through the lungs, and brings it all

hither through the septum, and so vaunts himself on having upset the

very foundations of the Harveian circulation (although I have nowhere

assumed such a basis for my doctrine; for there is a circulation in many

red-blooded animals that have no lungs), it may be well here to relate

an experiment which I lately tried in the presence of several of my

colleagues, and from the cogency of which there is no means of escape

for him. Having tied the pulmonary artery, the pulmonary veins, and the

aorta, in the body of a man who had been hanged, and then opened the

left ventricle of the heart, we passed a tube through the vena cava into

the right ventricle of the heart, and having, at the same time, attached

an ox’s bladder to the tube, in the same way as a clyster-bag is usually

made, we filled it nearly full of warm water, and forcibly injected the

fluid into the heart, so that the greater part of a pound of water was

thrown into the right auricle and ventricle. The result was, that the

right ventricle and auricle were enormously distended, but not a drop of

water or of blood made its escape through the orifice in the left

ventricle. The ligatures having been undone, the same tube was passed

into the pulmonary artery, and a tight ligature having been put round it

to prevent any reflux into the right ventricle, the water in the bladder

was now pushed towards the lungs, upon which a torrent of the fluid,

mixed with a quantity of blood, immediately gushed forth from the

perforation in the left ventricle; so that a quantity of water, equal to

that which was pressed from the bladder into the lungs at each effort,

instantly escaped by the perforation mentioned. You may try this

experiment as often as you please; the result you will still find to be

as I have stated it.

With this one experiment you may easily put an end to all Riolanus’s

altercations on the matter, to which he, nevertheless, so entirely

trusts, that, without adducing so much as a single experiment in support

of his views, he has been led to invent a new circulation, and even so

far to commit himself as to say that, unless the old doctrine of the

circulation[404] be overturned, his own is inadmissible. We may pardon

this distinguished individual for not having sooner discovered a hidden

truth; but that he, so well skilled in anatomy as he is, should

obstinately contend against a truth illustrated by the clearest light of

reason, this surely is argument of his envy--let me not call it by any

worse name. But, perhaps, we are still to find an excuse for Riolanus,

and to say, that what he has written is not so much of his own motion,

as in discharge of the duties of his office, and with a view to stand

well with his colleagues. As Dean of the College of Paris, he was bound

to see the physic of Galen kept in good repair, and to admit no novelty

into the school, without the most careful winnowing, lest, as he says,

the precepts and dogmata of physic should be disturbed, and the

pathology which has for so many years obtained the sanction of all the

learned in assigning the causes of disease, be overthrown. He has been

playing the part of the advocate, therefore, rather than of the

practised anatomist. But, as Aristotle tells us, it is not less absurd

to expect demonstrative arguments from the advocate, than it is to look

for persuasive arguments from the demonstrator or teacher. For the sake

of the old friendship subsisting between us, moreover, and the high

praise which he has lavished on the doctrine of the circulation, I

cannot find it in my heart to say anything severe of Riolanus.

I therefore return to you, most learned Siegel, and say, that I wish

greatly I had been so full and explicit in what I have said on the

subject of anastomosis in my disquisition to Riolanus, as would have

left you with no doubts or scruples on the matter. I could wish, also,

that you had taken into account not only what I have there denied, but

likewise what I have asserted on the transference of the blood from the

arteries into the veins; especially as I there seem to have pointed out

some cause both for my inquiry and for my negation, to hint at a certain

cause. I confess, I say, nay, I even pointedly assert, that I have never

found any visible anastomoses. But this was particularly said against

Riolanus, who limited the circulation of the blood to the larger vessels

only, with which, therefore, these anastomoses, if any such there were,

must have been made conformable, viz. of ample size, and distinctly

visible. Although it be true, therefore, that I totally deny all

anastomoses of this description--anastomoses in the way the word is

commonly understood, and as the meaning has come down to us from Galen,

viz. a direct conjunction between the orifices of the [visible] arteries

and veins--I still admit, in the same disquisition, that I have found

what is equivalent to this in three places, namely, in the plexus of the

brain, in the spermatic or preparing arteries and veins, and in the

umbilical arteries and veins. I shall now, therefore, for your sake, my

learned friend, enter somewhat more at large into my reasons for

rejecting the vulgar notion of the anastomoses, and explain my own

conjectures concerning the mode of transition of the blood from the

minute arteries into the finest veins.

All reasonable medical men, both of ancient and modern times, have

believed in a mutual transfusion, or accession and recession of the

blood between the arteries and the veins; and for the sake of permitting

this, they have imagined certain inconspicuous openings, or obscure

foramina, through which the blood flowed hither and thither, moving out

of one vessel and returning to it again. Wherefore it is not wonderful

that Riolanus should in various places find that in the ancients which

is in harmony with the doctrine of a circulation. For a circulation in

such sort teaches nothing more than that the blood flows incessantly

from the veins into the arteries, and from the arteries back again into

the veins. But as the ancients thought that this movement took place

indeterminately, by a kind of accident, in one and the same place, and

through the same channels, I imagine that they therefore found

themselves compelled to adopt a system of anastomoses, or fine mouths

mutually conjoined, and serving both systems of vessels indifferently.

But the circulation which I discovered teaches clearly that there is a

necessary outward and backward flow of the blood, and this at different

times and places, and through other and yet other channels and passages;

that this flow is determinate also, and for the sake of a certain end,

and is accomplished in virtue of parts contrived for the purpose with

consummate forecast and most admirable art. So that the doctrine of the

motion of the blood from the veins into the arteries, which antiquity

only understood in the way of conjecture, and which it also spoke of in

confused and indefinite terms, was laid down by me with its assured and

necessary causes, and presents itself to the understanding as a thing

extremely clear, perfectly well arranged, and of approved verity. And

then, when I perceived that the blood was transferred from the veins

into the arteries through the medium of the heart with singular art, and

with the aid of an admirable apparatus of valves, I imagined that the

transference from the extremities of the arteries into those of the

veins could not be effected without some other admirable artifice, at

least wherever there was no transudation through the pores of the flesh.

I therefore held the anastomoses of the ancients as fairly open to

suspicion, both as they nowhere presented themselves to our eyes, and as

no sufficient reason was alleged for anything of the kind.

Since, then, I find a transit from the arteries into the veins in the

three places which I have above mentioned, equivalent to the anastomoses

of the ancients, and even affording the farther security against any

regurgitation into the arteries of the blood once delivered to the

veins, and as a mechanism of such a kind is more elaborate and better

suited to the circulation of the blood, I have therefore thought that

the anastomoses imagined by the ancients were to be rejected. But you

will ask, what is this artifice? what these ducts? viz. the small

arteries, which are always much smaller--twice, even three times

smaller--than the veins which they accompany, which they approach

continually more and more, and within the tunics of which they are

finally lost. I have been therefore led to conceive that the blood

brought thus between the coats of the veins advanced for a certain way

along them, and that the same thing took place here which we observe in

the conjunction between the ureters and the bladder, and of the biliary

duct with the duodenum. The ureters insinuate themselves obliquely and

tortuously between the coats of the bladder, without anything in the

nature of an anastomosis, yet in such a manner as occasionally affords a

passage to blood, to pus, and to calculi; it is easy, moreover, to fill

the bladder through them with air or water; but by no effort can you

force anything from the bladder into them. I care not, however, to make

any question here of the etymology of words; for I am not of opinion

that it is the province of philosophy to infer aught as to the works of

nature from the signification of words, or to cite anatomical

disquisitions before the grammatical tribunal. Our business is not so

much to inquire what a word properly signifies, as how it is commonly

understood; for use and wont, as in so many other matters, are greatly

to be considered in the interpretation of words. It seems to me,

therefore, that we are to take especial care not to employ any unusual

words, or any common ones already familiarly used, in a sense which is

not in accordance with the meaning we purpose to attach to them. You

indeed counsel well when you say, “only make sure of the thing, call it

what you will.” But when we discover that a thing has hitherto been

indifferently or incorrectly explained (as the sequel will show it to

have been in the present case), I do not think that the old appellation

can ever be well applied to the new fact; by using the old term you are

apt to mislead where you desire to instruct. I acknowledge, then, a

transit of the blood from the arteries, into the veins, and that

occasionally immediate, without any intervention of soft parts; but it

does not take place in the manner hitherto believed, and as you yourself

would have it, where you say that anastomoses, correctly speaking,

rather than an anastomosis, were required, namely, that the vessels may

be open on either hand, and give free passage to the blood hither and

thither. And hence it comes that you fail in the right solution of the

question, when you ask how it happens that with the arteries as patent

or pervious as the veins, the blood nevertheless flows only from the

former into the latter, never from the latter into the former? For what

you say of the impulse of the blood through the arteries does not fully

solve the difficulty in the present instance. For if the aorta be tied

near the left ventricle of the heart in a living animal, and all the

blood removed from the arteries, the veins are still seen full of blood;

so that it neither moves back spontaneously into the arteries, nor can

it be repelled into these by any force, whilst even in a dead animal it

nevertheless falls of its own accord through the finest pores of the

flesh and skin from superior into inferior parts. The passage of the

blood into the veins is, indeed, effected by the impulse in question,

and not by any dilatation of these in the manner of bellows, by which

the blood is drawn towards them; but there are no anastomoses of the

vessels by conjunction (per copulam), in the way you mention, none where

two vessels meeting are conjoined by equal mouths. There is only an

opening of the artery into the vein, exactly in the same manner as the

ureter opens into the bladder (and the biliary duct opens into the

jejunum), by which, whilst the flow of urine is perfectly free towards

the bladder, all reflux into the smaller conduits is effectually

prevented; the fuller the bladder is, indeed, the more are the sides of

the ureters compressed, and the more effectual is all ascent of urine in

them prevented. Now, on this hypothesis, it is easy to render a reason

for the experiment which I have already mentioned. I add further, that I

can in nowise admit such anastomoses as are commonly imagined, inasmuch

as the arteries being always much smaller than the veins, it is

impossible that their sides can mutually conjoin in such a way as will

allow of their forming a common meatus; it seems matter of necessity

that things which join in this way should be of equal size. Lastly,

these vessels having made a certain circuit, must, at their

terminations, encounter one another; they would not, as it happens,

proceed straight to the extremities of the body. And the veins, on their

part, if they were conjoined with the arteries by mutual inosculations,

would necessarily, and by reason of the continuity of parts, pulsate

like the arteries.

And now, that I may make an end of my writing, I say, that whilst I

think the industry of every one deserving of commendation, I do not

remember that I have anywhere bepraised mine own. You, however, most

excellent sir, I conceive have deserved high commendation, both for the

care you have bestowed on your disquisition on the liver of the ox, and

for the judgment you display in your observations. Go on, therefore, as

you are doing, and grace the republic of letters with the fruits of your

genius, for thus will you render a grateful service to all the learned,

and especially to

Your loving

WILLIAM HARVEY.

Written in London, this 26th of March, 1651.

LETTER III.

_To the very excellent John Nardi, of Florence._

I should have sent letters to you sooner, but our public troubles in

part, and in part the labour of putting to press my work ‘On the

Generation of Animals,’ have hindered me from writing. And indeed I, who

receive your works--on the signal success of which I congratulate you

from my heart--and along with them most kind letters, do but very little

to one so distinguished as yourself in replying by a very short epistle.

I only write at this time that I may tell you how constantly I think of

you, and how truly I store up in my memory the grateful remembrance of

all your kindnesses and good offices to myself and to my nephew, when we

were each of us severally in Florence. I would wish, illustrious sir, to

have your news as soon as convenient:--what you are about yourself, and

what you think of this work of mine; for I make no case of the opinions

and criticisms of our pretenders to scholarship, who have nothing but

levity in their judgments, and indeed are wont to praise none but their

own productions. As soon as I know that you are well, however, and that

you live not unmindful of us here, I propose to myself frequently to

enjoy this intercourse by letter, and I shall take care to transmit

other books to you. I pray for many and prosperous years to your Duke;

and for yourself a long εὐημερία. Farewell, most learned sir, and love

in return.

Yours, most truly,

WILLIAM HARVEY.

The 15th of July, 1651.

LETTER IV.

_In reply to R. Morison, M.D., of Paris._

ILLUSTRIOUS SIR,--The reason why your most kind letter has remained up

to this time unanswered is simply this, that the book of M. Pecquet,

upon which you ask my opinion, did not come into my hands until towards

the end of the past month. It stuck by the way, I imagine, with some

one, who, either through negligence, or desiring himself to see what was

newest, has for so long a time hindered me of the pleasure I have had in

the perusal. That you may, therefore, at once and clearly know my

opinion of this work, I say that I greatly commend the author for his

assiduity in dissection, for his dexterity in contriving new

experiments, and for the shrewdness which he still evinces in his

remarks upon them. With what labour do we attain to the hidden things of

truth when we take the averments of our senses as the guide which God

has given us for attaining to a knowledge of his works; avoiding that

specious path on which the eyesight is dazzled with the brilliancy of

mere reasoning, and so many are led to wrong conclusions, to

probabilities only, and too frequently to sophistical conjectures on

things!

I further congratulate myself on his confirmation of my views of the

circulation of the blood by such lucid experiments and clear reasons. I

only wish he had observed that the heart has three kinds of motion,

namely, the systole, in which the organ contracts and expels the blood

contained in its cavities, and next, a movement, the opposite of the

former one, in which the fibres of the heart appropriated to motion are

relaxed. Now these two motions inhere in the substance of the heart

itself, just as they do in all other muscles. The remaining motion is

the diastole, in which the heart is distended by the blood impelled from

the auricles into the ventricles; and the ventricles, thus replete and

distended, are stimulated to contraction, and this motion always

precedes the systole, which follows immediately afterwards.

With regard to the lacteal veins discovered by Aselli, and by the

further diligence of Pecquet, who discovered the receptacle or reservoir

of the chyle, and traced the canals thence to the subclavian veins, I

shall tell you freely, since you ask me what I think of them. I had

already, in the course of my dissections, I venture to say even before

Aselli had published his book,[405] observed these white canals, and

plenty of milk in various parts of the body, especially in the glands of

younger animals, as in the mesentery, where glands abound; and thence I

thought came the pleasant taste of the thymus in the calf and lamb,

which, as you know, is called the sweetbread in our vernacular tongue.

But for various reasons, and led by several experiments, I could never

be brought to believe that that milky fluid was chyle conducted hither

from the intestines, and distributed to all parts of the body for their

nourishment; but that it was rather met with occasionally and by

accident, and proceeded from too ample a supply of nourishment and a

peculiar vigour of concoction; in virtue of the same law of nature, in

short, as that by which fat, marrow, semen, hair, &c., are produced;

even as in the due digestion of ulcers pus is formed, which the nearer

it approaches to the consistency of milk, viz. as it is whiter,

smoother, and more homogeneous, is held more laudable, so that some of

the ancients thought pus and milk were of the same nature, or nearly

allied. Wherefore, although there can be no question of the existence of

the vessels themselves, still I can by no means agree with Aselli in

considering them as chyliferous vessels, and this especially for the

reasons about to be given, which lead me to a different conclusion. For

the fluid contained in the lacteal veins appears to me to be pure milk,

such as is found in the lacteal veins [the milk ducts] of the mammæ. Now

it does not seem to me very probable (any more than it does to Auzotius

in his letter to Pecquet) that the milk is chyle, and thus that the

whole body is nourished by means of milk. The reasons which lead to a

contrary conclusion, viz. that it is chyle, are not of such force as to

compel my assent. I should first desire to have it demonstrated to me by

the clearest reasonings, and the guarantee of experiments, that the

fluid contained in these vessels was chyle, which, brought hither from

the intestines, supplies nourishment to the whole body. For unless we

are agreed upon the first point, any ulterior, any more operose,

discussion of their nature, is in vain. But how can these vessels serve

as conduits for the whole of the chyle, or the nourishment of the body,

when we see that they are different in different animals? In some they

proceed to the liver, in others to the porta only, and in others still

to neither of these. In some creatures they are seen to be extremely

numerous in the pancreas; in others the thymus is crowded with them; in

a third class, again, nothing can be seen of them in either of these

organs. In some animals, indeed, such chyliferous canals are nowhere to

be discovered (vide Liceti Epist. xiii, tit. ii, p. 83, et Sennerti

Praxeos, lib. v, tit. 2, par. 3, cap. 1); neither do they exist in any

at all times. But the vessels which serve for nutrition must necessarily

both exist in all animals, and present themselves at all times; inasmuch

as the waste incurred by the ceaseless efflux of the spirits, and the

wear and tear of the parts of the body, can only be supplied by as

ceaseless a restoration or nutrition. And then, their very slender

calibre seems to render them not less inadequate to this duty than their

structure seems to unfit them for its performance: the smaller channels

ought plainly to end in larger ones, these in their turn in channels

larger still, and the whole to concentrate in one great trunk, which

should correspond in its dimensions to the aggregate capacity of all the

branches; just such an arrangement as may be seen to exist in the vena

portæ and its tributaries, and farther in the trunk of the tree, which

is equal to its roots. Wherefore, if the efferent canals of a fluid must

be equal in dimensions to the afferent canals of the same fluid, the

chyliferous ducts which Pecquet discovers in the thorax, ought at least

to equal the two ureters in dimensions; otherwise they who drink a

gallon or more of one of the acidulous waters could not pass off all

this fluid in so short a space of time by these vessels into the

bladder. And truly, when we see the matter of the urine passing thus

copiously through the appropriate channels, I do not see how these veins

could preserve their milky colour, and the urine all the while remain

without a tinge of whiteness.

I add, too, that the chyle is neither in all animals, nor at all times,

of the consistency and colour of milk; and therefore did these vessels

carry chyle, they could not always (which nevertheless they do) contain

a white fluid in their interior, but would sometimes be coloured yellow,

green, or of some other hue (in the same way as the urine is affected,

and acquires different colours from eating rhubarb, asparagus, figs,

&c.); or otherwise, when large quantities of mineral water were drunk,

they would be deprived of almost all colour. Besides, did that white

matter pass from the intestines into those canals, or were it attracted

from the intestines, the same fluid ought certainly to be discovered

somewhere within the intestines themselves, or in their spongy tunics;

for it does not seem probable that any fluid by bare and rapid

percolation of the intestines could assume a new nature, and be changed

into milk. Moreover, were the chyle only filtered through the tunics of

the intestines, it ought surely to retain some traces of its original

nature, and resemble in colour and smell the fluid contained in the

intestines; it ought to smell offensively at least; for whatever is

contained in the intestines is tinged with bile, and smells

unpleasantly. Some have consequently thought that the body was nourished

by means of chyle raised into attenuated vapour, because vapours

exhaling in the alembic, even from fœtid matters, often do not smell

amiss.

The learned Pecquet ascribes the motion of this milky fluid to

respiration. For my own part, though strongly tempted to do otherwise, I

shall say nothing upon this topic until we are agreed as to what the

fluid is. But were we to concede the point (which Pecquet takes for

granted without any sufficient reason in the shape of argument), that

chyle was continually transported by the canals in question from the

intestines to the subclavian veins, in which the vessels he has lately

discovered terminate, we should have to say that the chyle before

reaching the heart was mixed with the blood which is about to enter the

right side of the organ, and that it there obtains a further concoction.

But what, some one might with as good reason ask, should hinder it from

passing into the porta, then into the liver, and thence into the cava,

in conformity with the arrangement which Aselli and others are said to

have found? Why, indeed, should we not as well believe that the chyle

enters the mouths of the mesenteric veins, and in this way becomes

immediately mingled with the blood, where it might receive digestion and

perfection from the heat, and serve for the nutrition of all the parts?

For the heart itself can be accounted of higher importance than other

parts; can be termed the source of heat and of life, upon no other

grounds than as it contains a larger quantity of blood in its cavities,

where, as Aristotle says, the blood is not contained in veins as it is

in other parts, but in an ample sinus and cistern, as it were. And that

the thing is so in fact, I find an argument in the distribution of

innumerable arteries and veins to the intestines, more than to any other

part of the body, in the same way as the uterus abounds with

blood-vessels during the period of pregnancy. For nature never acts

inconsiderately. In all the red-blooded animals, consequently, which

require [abundant] nourishment, we find a copious distribution of

mesenteric vessels; but lacteal veins we discover in but a few, and even

in these not constantly. Wherefore, if we are to judge of the uses of

parts as we meet with them in general and in the greater number of

animals, beyond all doubt those filaments of a white colour, and very

like the fibres of a spider’s web, are not instituted for the purpose of

transporting nourishment, neither is the fluid they contain to be

designated by the name of chyle; the mesenteric vessels are rather

destined to the duty in question. Because, of that whence an animal is

constituted, by that must it necessarily grow, and by that consequently

be nourished; for the nutritive and augmentative faculties, or nutrition

and growth, are essentially the same. An animal, therefore, naturally

grows in the same manner as it receives immediate nutriment from the

first. Now it is a most certain fact (as I have shown elsewhere) that

the embryos of all red-blooded animals are nourished by means of the

umbilical vessels from the mother, and this in virtue of the circulation

of the blood. They are not nourished, however, immediately by the blood,

as many have imagined, but after the manner of the chick in ovo, which

is first nourished by the albumen, and then by the vitellus, which is

finally drawn into and included within the abdomen of the chick. All the

umbilical vessels, however, are inserted into the liver, or at all

events pass through it, even in those animals whose umbilical vessels

enter the vena portæ, as in the chick, in which the vessels proceeding

from the yelk always so terminate. In the selfsame way, therefore, as

the chick is nourished from a nutriment, (viz. the albumen and

vitellus,) previously prepared, even so does it continue to be nourished

through the whole course of its independent existence. And the same

thing, as I have elsewhere shown, is common to all embryos whatsoever:

the nourishment mingled with the blood, is transmitted through their

veins to the heart, whence moving on by the arteries, it is carried to

every part of the body. The fœtus when born, when thrown upon its own

resources, and no longer immediately nourished by the mother, makes use

of its stomach and intestines just as the chick makes use of the

contents of the egg, and vegetables make use of the ground whence they

derive concocted nutriment. For even as the chick at the commencement

obtained its nourishment from the egg, by means of the umbilical vessels

(arteries and veins) and the circulation of the blood, so does it

subsequently, and when it has escaped from the shell, receive

nourishment by the mesenteric veins; so that in either way the chyle

passes through the same channels, and takes its route by the same path

through the liver. Nor do I see any reason why the route by which the

chyle is carried in one animal should not be that by which it is carried

in all animals whatsoever; nor indeed, if a circulation of the blood be

necessary in this matter, as it really is, that there is any need for

inventing another way.

I must say that I greatly prize the industry of the learned Pecquet, and

make much of the receptacle which he has discovered; still it does not

present itself to me as of such importance as to force me from the

opinion I have already given; for I have myself found several

receptacles of milk in young animals; and in the human embryo I have

found the thymus so distended with milk, that suspicions of an

imposthume were at first sight excited, and I was disposed to believe

that the lungs were in a state of suppuration, for the mass of the

thymus looked actually larger than the lungs themselves. Frequently,

too, I have found a quantity of milk in the nipples of new-born infants,

as also in the breasts of young men who were very lusty. I have also met

with a receptacle full of milk in the body of a fat and large deer, in

the situation where Pecquet indicates his receptacle, of such a size

that it might readily have been compared to the abomasus, or read of the

animal.

These observations, learned sir, have I made at this time in answer to

your letter, that I might show my readiness to comply with your wishes.

Pray present my most kind wishes to Dr. Pecquet and to Dr. Gayant.

Farewell, and believe me to be, very affectionately and respectfully,

Yours,

WILLIAM HARVEY.

London, the 28th April, 1652.

LETTER V.

_To the most excellent and learned John Nardi, of Florence._

DISTINGUISHED AND ACCOMPLISHED SIR,--The arrival of your letter lately

gave me the liveliest pleasure, and the receipt at the same time of your

learned comments upon Lucretius satisfied me that you are not only

living and well, but that you are at work among the sacred things of

Apollo. I do indeed rejoice to see truly learned men everywhere

illustrating the republic of letters, even in the present age, in which

the crowd of foolish scribblers is scarcely less than the swarms of

flies in the height of summer, and threatens with their crude and flimsy

productions to stifle us as with smoke. Among other things that

delighted me greatly in your book was that part where I see you ascribe

plague almost to the same efficient cause as I do animal generation.

Still it must be confessed that it is difficult to explain how the idea,

or form, or vital principle should be transfused from the genitor to the

genetrix, and from her transmitted to the conception or ovum, and thence

to the fœtus, and in this produce not only an image of the genitor, or

an external species, but also various peculiarities or accidents, such

as disposition, vices, hereditary diseases, nævi or mother-marks, &c.

All of these accidents must inhere in the geniture and semen, and

accompany that specific thing, by whatever name you call it, from which

an animal is not only produced, but by which it is afterwards governed,

and to the end of its life preserved. As all this, I say, is not readily

accounted for, so do I hold it scarcely less difficult to conceive how

pestilence or leprosy should be communicated to a distance by contagion,

by a zymotic element contained in woollen or linen things, household

furniture, even the walls of a house, cement, rubbish, &c., as we find

it stated in the fourteenth chapter of Leviticus. How, I ask, can

contagion, long lurking in such things, leave them in fine, and after a

long lapse of time produce its like in another body? Nor in one or two

only, but in many, without respect of strength, sex, age, temperament,

or mode of life, and with such violence that the evil can by no art be

stayed or mitigated. Truly it does not seem less likely that form, or

soul, or idea, whether this be held substantive or accidental, should be

transferred to something else, whence an animal at length emerges, all

as if it had been produced on purpose, and to a certain end, with

foresight, intelligence, and divine art.

These are among the number of more abstruse matters, and demand your

ingenuity, most learned Nardi. Nor need you plead in excuse your

advanced life; I myself, although verging on my eightieth year, and

sorely failed in bodily strength, nevertheless feel my mind still

vigorous, so that I continue to give myself up with the greatest

pleasure to studies of this kind. I send you along with these, three

books upon the subject you name.[406] If you will mention my name to his

Serene Highness the Duke of Tuscany, with thankfulness for the

distinguished honour he did me when I was formerly in Florence, and add

my wishes for his safety and prosperity, you will do a very kind thing

to

Your devoted and very attached friend,

WILLIAM HARVEY.

30th Nov. 1653.

LETTER VI.

_To John Daniel Horst, principal Physician of Hesse-Darmstadt._

EXCELLENT SIR,--I am much pleased to find, that in spite of the long

time that has passed, and the distance that separates us, you have not

yet lost me from your memory, and I could wish that it lay in my power

to answer all your inquiries. But, indeed, my age does not permit me to

have this pleasure, for I am not only far stricken in years, but am

afflicted with more and more indifferent health. With regard to the

opinions of Riolanus, and his decision as to the circulation of the

blood, it is very obvious that he makes vast throes in the production of

vast trifles; nor do I see that he has as yet satisfied a single

individual with his figments. Siegel wrote well and modestly, and, had

the fates allowed, would undoubtedly have answered his arguments and

reproaches also. But Siegel as I learn, and grieve to learn, died some

months ago. As to what you ask of me, in reference to the so-called

lacteal veins and thoracic ducts, I reply, that it requires good eyes,

and a mind free from other anxieties, to come to any definite conclusion

in regard to these extremely minute vessels; to me, however, as I have

just said, neither of these requisites is given. About two years ago,

when asked my opinion on the same subject, I replied at length, and to

the effect that it was not sufficiently determined whether it was chyle

or one of the thicker constituents of milk, destined speedily to pass

into fat, which flowed in these white vessels; and further that the

vessels themselves are wanting in several animals, namely, birds and

fishes, though it seems most probable that these creatures are nourished

upon the same principles as quadrupeds; nor can any sufficient reason be

rendered why in the embryo all nutriment, carried by the umbilical vein,

should pass through the liver, but that this should not happen when the

fœtus is freed from the prison of the womb, and made independent.

Besides, the thoracic duct itself, and the orifice by which it

communicates with the subclavian vein, appear too small and narrow to

suffice for the transmission of all the supplies required by the body.

And I have asked myself farther, why such numbers of blood-vessels,

arteries, and veins should be sent to the intestines if there were

nothing to be brought back from thence? especially as these are mere

membraneous parts, and on this account require a smaller supply of

blood.

These and other observations of the same tenor I have already made,--not

as being obstinately wedded to my own opinion, but that I might find out

what could reasonably be urged to the contrary by the advocates of the

new views. I am ready to award the highest praise to Pecquet and others

for their singular industry in searching out the truth; nor do I doubt

but that many things still lie hidden in Democritus’s well that are

destined to be drawn up into the light by the indefatigable diligence of

coming ages. So much do I say at this time, which, I trust, with your

known kindness, you will take in good part. Farewell, learned friend;

live happily, and hold me always

Yours, most affectionately,

WILLIAM HARVEY.

London, 1st February, 1654-5.

LETTER VII.

_To the distinguished and learned John Dan. Horst, principal Physician

at the Court of Hesse-Darmstadt._

MOST EXCELLENT SIR,--Advanced age, which unfits us for the investigation

of novel subtleties, and the mind which inclines to repose after the

fatigues of lengthened labours, prevent me from mixing myself up with

the investigation of these new and difficult questions: so far am I from

courting the office of umpire in this dispute! I was anxious to do you a

pleasure lately, when, in reply to your request, I sent you the

substance of what I had formerly written to a Parisian physician as my

ideas on the lacteal veins and thoracic ducts.[407] Not, indeed, that I

was certain of the opinion then delivered, but that I might place these

objections such as they were before those who fancy that when they have

made a certain progress in discovery all is revealed by them.

With reference to your letters in reply, however, and in so far as the

collection of milky fluid in the vessels of Aselli is concerned, I have

not ascribed it to accident, and as if there were not certain assignable

causes for its existence; but I have denied that it was found at all

times in all animals, as the constant tenor of nutrition would seem to

require. Nor is it requisite that a matter, already thin and much

diluted, and which is to become fat after the ulterior concoction,

should concrete in the dead animal. The instance of pus, I have adduced

only incidentally and collaterally. The hinge upon which our whole

discussion turns is the assumption that the fluid contained in the

lacteal vessels of Aselli is chyle. This position I certainly do not

think you demonstrate satisfactorily, when you say that chyle must be

educed from the intestines, and that it can by no means be carried off

by the arteries, veins, or nerves; and thence conclude that this

function must be performed by the lacteals. I, however, can see no

reason wherefore the innumerable veins which traverse the intestines at

every point, and return to the heart the blood which they have received

from the arteries, should not, at the same time, also suck up the chyle

which penetrates the parts, and so transmit it to the heart; and this

the rather, as it seems probable that some chyle passes immediately from

the stomach before its contents have escaped into the intestines, (or

how account for the rapid recovery of the spirits and strength in cases

of fainting?) although no lacteals are distributed to the stomach.