Chapter XLI: Introduction (16)

In the body of a woman who died of fever I found an hermaphrodite embryo nearly of the same size. The pudendum was like that of the rabbit, the labia standing for prepuce, the nymphæ for glans. In the upper part the root of the penis was also apparent, and on either side for the testicle there was the lax skin of the scrotum. The uterus was extremely diminutive, and in figure like that of the ewe or mole, with two horns. And as the prostate glands are situated near the penis of the boy, so were the testicles (ovaries) of visible dimensions, seen adjacent to these cornua. Externally considered, the sex seemed that of the male; internally, however, it was rather that of the female. The uterus of the mother was of great size, having the urinary bladder connected with it as an appendage. In the embryo, on the contrary, the bladder was large with the uterus of very small dimensions attached to it.

All the human ova that have been described above were, like those of the ewe, shaggy externally, and besmeared with a kind of gelatine, or glutinous matter. At this epoch, too, there was neither any placenta apparent, nor any visible connexion with the uterus; neither was there any implantation into the substance of the uterus of the umbilical vessels scattered over the surface of the conception itself.

As in the deer, so in the sheep, goat, and other bisulcated animals, do we find more than one fœtus in the same conception, just as in twin-fraught eggs we find two chicks surrounded by the same albumen. But in the dog, rabbit, hog, and other viviparous animals that produce a considerable number at a litter, the thing is otherwise. In these each fœtus has two humours, these being severally surrounded with their proper membranes.

In the bitch there are a number of knots or constrictions along the whole course of either cornu of the uterus, between each of which the appropriate humours and a single embryo are contained. In the hare and rabbit we observe a number of balls, like the eggs of serpents, so that the horns of the uterus look like a pair of bracelets composed of so many amber beads strung upon a thread. The conception of the hare bears a strong resemblance to an acorn, the placenta embracing the embryo like a cup, and the humours inclosed in their membranes depending like the gland or nut.

EXERCISE THE SEVENTIETH.

_Of the conception of the deer in the course of the month of December._

In the beginning of December the fœtus is seen larger, every way more perfect, and the length of the finger. The heart and other viscera which formerly hung externally are now concealed within the cavities of the body, so that they can no longer be seen without dissection.

The conception, or ovum, by the medium of the five caruncles which we have already spoken of as present in either cornu, is now in connexion with the uterus at an equal number of points; still the union is not so strong but that a very slight rather than a great effort suffices to break it. When the conception is detached, we perceive points or depressions on the surface of the chorion at the places where the adhesions to the uterus had existed, these spots being further covered with a certain viscid and wrinkled matter, as if this had been the bond of union between the mother and the ovum. Thus have we the nature and use of these caruncles made known to us: seen in the first instance as fungi or excrescences growing from the sides of the uterus, they are now recognized in connexion with the conception, as standing instead of the placenta or uterine cake in the human subject, and performing the same office. These caruncles are in fact but as so many nipples, whence the embryo by means of its umbilical vessels receives the nourishment that is supplied by the mother, as shall be clearly shown by what is to follow.

The size and capacity of the uterus, by which name we understand the cornua, or place occupied by the conception, is increased in proportion to the growth of the embryo; in suchwise, however, that the horn in which the fœtus is lodged is larger than the other.

The conception or ovum is single, whether one or several embryos are evolved from it; and it extends, as already said, into both of the horns, so that it presents itself with the shape of a double pudding, or rather of a single pudding having a constriction in its middle. Proceeding rounded and slender from the upper extremity of one of the horns, the conception gradually enlarges, and is produced into that common cavity which in the human female is called the uterus or matrix; (because, by conceiving and cherishing her offspring in this place the woman is made a mother;) the conception of the deer, passing through a kind of isthmus in the body of the uterus, is narrowed; but by and by, escaping into the other cornu, it there expands at first, but anon contracts again, and finally ends as it began in a tapering extremity. The whole conception, therefore, taken out entire, resembles a wallet filled with water on either side; and hence the chorion is also called allantois, because the conception in the lower animals, such as the deer, looks like an intestine inflated, or stuffed and tied in the middle.

In the embryo anatomized at this period every internal part is seen distinct and perfect; particularly the stomach, intestines, heart, kidneys, and lungs, which, divided into lobes, but having the proper form of the organs, look bloody. The colour of the lungs is deeper than it is in those fœtuses that have breathed, because the lungs, dilated by the act of respiration, assume a whiter tint. And by this indication is it known whether a mother has brought forth a living or dead child; in the former case the colour of the lungs is changed, and the change remains though the infant have died immediately afterwards.

In the female fœtus the testes--improperly so called--are seen situated near the kidneys at the extremities of the cornua uteri on either side; they are relatively of larger size than in the adult, and, like the caruncles of the uterus, look white.

In the stomach of the fœtus there is a watery fluid contained, not unlike that in which it swims, but somewhat more turbid or less transparent. It resembles the milk that begins to be secreted in the breasts of pregnant women about the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, and may be pressed out of the nipples, or it is like the drink which we call white posset.

In the small intestines there is an abundance of chyle concocted from the same matter; in the colon greenish fæces and scybala begin to appear.

I do not find the urachus perforate; neither do I perceive any difference between the tunica allantoides or allantois, which is said to contain urine, and the chorion. Neither do I detect any urine in the secundines, but only in the bladder, where indeed it is present in large quantity. The bladder, of an oblong form, is situated between the umbilical arteries as they proceed from the bifurcation of the descending aorta.

The liver is rudely sketched and almost shapeless, as if it were a mere accidental part; it looks like a red coloured mass of extravasated blood. The brain, with some pretensions to regularity of outline, is contained within the dura mater. The eyes are concealed under the eyelids, which are as firmly glued together as we find them in puppies for some short time after birth, so that I found it scarcely possible to separate them and open the eyes. The breast-bones and ribs have a certain degree of firmness, and the colour of the muscles changes from white to blood red.

By the great number of dissections which I performed in the course of this month, I was every day confirmed in my opinion that the carunculæ of the uterus perform the office of the placenta; they are at this time found of a reddish colour, turgid, and of the size of walnuts. The conception, which had previously adhered to the caruncles by the medium of mucor or glutinous matter only, now sends the branches of its umbilical vessels into them, as plants send their roots into the ground, by which it is fastened and may be said to grow to the uterus.

About the end of December the fœtus is a span long, and I have seen it moving lustily and kicking; opening and shutting its mouth; the heart, inclosed in the pericardium, when exposed, was found pulsating strongly and visibly; its ventricles, however, were still uniform, of equal amplitude of cavity and thickness of parietes; and each ending in a separate apex, they form together a double-pointed cone. Occasionally I have seen the fluid contained in the auricles of the heart, which at this time present themselves as ample sacs filled with blood, continuing to pulsate for some short time after the ventricles themselves had left off contracting.

The internal organs, all of which had lately become perfect, were now larger and more conspicuous. The skull was partly cartilaginous, partly osseous. The hooves were yellowish, flexible, and soft, resembling those of the adult animal softened in hot water. The uterine caruncles, of great magnitude and like immense fungi, extended over the whole cavity of the uterus, and plainly performed the office of placentæ, for numerous and ample branches of the umbilical vessels penetrated their substance there to imbibe nutritive matter for the growth of the embryo. As in the fœtus after birth, the chyle is now carried by the mesenteric veins to the porta of the liver.

Where there is a single fœtus the umbilical vessels are distributed to the whole of the carunculse, both those of the horn where the fœtus is lodged and those of the opposite horn; where there is a pair of embryos formed, the umbilical vessels of each only extend to the caruncles of the horn appropriated to it.

The smaller umbilical veins in tending towards the fœtus, form larger and larger trunks by coalescing, until at length two great canals are formed, which in conjunction pour their blood into the vena cava and vena portæ. But the umbilical arteries, which arise from the division of the descending aorta, form two trunks of small size, not remarkable save for their pulse: proceeding to the boundary of the conception, in other words, to the conjunction of the placenta or carunculæ with the ramifications of the umbilical veins, they first divide into numerous capillary twigs, and then are lost in others that are invisible.

As the extremities of the umbilical veins within the uterus terminate in the caruncles, so the uterine vessels on the outside, which are large and numerous, and bring the blood from the mother towards the uterus, by means of the vessels of the suspensory ligaments, terminate externally on the caruncles. It is to be noted, also, that the internal vessels are almost all veins; the external vessels, again, are in many instances branches of arteries. In the placenta of the woman, if it be carefully examined immediately after delivery, a much larger number of arteries than of veins, and these of larger size, will be found dispersed on every side in innumerable subdivisions to the very edge of the mass. In the same kind of spongy parenchyma of the spleen, the number of the arteries is also greater than that of the veins.

The exterior uterine vessels run to the uterus, as I have said, not to the ovaries (testiculi) situated in the suspensory ligament, as some suppose.

I have remarked an admirable instance of the skill of nature, in the bulge or convexity of the caruncles turned towards the conception: a quantity of white and mucilaginous matter is discovered in a number of cavities, cotyledons, or little cups; these are all as full of this matter as we ever see waxen cells full of honey; now this matter, in colour, consistency, and taste, is extremely like white of egg. On tearing the conception away from the caruncles, you will perceive numbers of suckers or capillary branches of the umbilical veins, looking like lengthened filaments, extracted at the same time from every one of the cotyledons and pits, and from amidst their mucilaginous contents; very much as we see the delicate filaments of the roots of herbs following the stem when it is pulled out of the ground.

It is clearly ascertained from this that the extremities of the umbilical vessels are not conjoined by any anastomosis with the extremities of the uterine vessels; that they do not imbibe any blood from them, but that they end and are obliterated in that mucilaginous matter, and from it take up their nourishment, nearly in the same way as at an earlier period they had sought for aliment from the albuminous humour contained within the membranes of the conception. In the same manner, consequently, as the chick in ovo is nourished by the white of the egg through its umbilical vessels, is the fœtus of the hind and doe nourished by a similar albuminous matter laid up in these cells, and not directly from the blood of the mother.

These carunculæ might therefore with propriety be called the uterine liver, or the uterine mammæ, seeing that they are organs adapted for the preparation and concoction of that albuminous aliment, and fitting it for absorption by the veins. In those viviparous animals consequently that have neither caruncles nor placentæ, as the horse and the hog, the fœtus is nourished up to the moment of its birth by fluids contained within the conception or ovum; nor has the ovum in these animals at any time a connexion with the uterus.

From all of what precedes it is manifest that in both the classes of viviparous animals alluded to, those, namely, that are provided with carunculæ or cotyledons, and those that want them, and perhaps in viviparous animals generally, the fœtus in utero is not nourished otherwise than the chick in ovo; the nutritive matter, the albumen, being of the same identical kind in all. As in the egg the terminations of the umbilical vessels are in the white and yelk, so in the hind and doe, and other animals furnished with uterine cotyledons like them, the final distributions of the umbilical vessels are sent to the humours that are included within the conception or ovum, and to the albumen that is stored in the cotyledons, or cup-like cavities of the carunculæ, where they open and end. And this is further obvious from the fact of the extremities of the umbilical vessels, when they are drawn out of the afore-mentioned mucor, looking completely white; a certain proof that they absorb this mucilage liquefied only, and not blood. The same arrangement may very readily be observed to obtain in the egg.

The human placenta is rendered uneven on its convex surface, and where it adheres to the uterus, by a number of tuberous projections, and it seems indeed to adhere to the uterus by means of these; it is not consequently attached at every point, but at those places only where the vessels pierce it in search of nourishment, and at those where, in consequence of this arrangement, an appearance as if of vessels broken short off is perceived. But whether the extremities of these vessels suck up blood from the uterus, or rather a certain concocted matter of the nature of albumen, as I have described the thing in the hind and doe, I have not yet ascertained.

Finally, that the truth just announced may be still more fully confirmed, it is found that by compressing the uterine caruncles between the fingers, about a spoonful of the nutritive fluid in question may be obtained from each of them, as from a nipple, unmixed with blood, which is not obtained even with forcible pressure. Moreover, the caruncle thus milked and emptied, like a compressed sponge, contracts and becomes flaccid, and is seen to be pierced with a great number of holes. From everything, therefore, it appears that these caruncles are uterine mammæ, or fountains and receptacles of nutritive albumen.

The month of December at an end, the caruncles adhere less firmly to the uterus than before, and a small matter suffices to detach them. The larger the fœtus grows, indeed, the nearer it is to its term, the more readily are the caruncles detached from the uterus, so that, like ripe fruit from the tree, they slip at length from the uterus of themselves, and as if they had formed an original element in the conception.

Separated from the uterus you may perceive in the prints which they leave points pouring out blood; these are the arteries that entered them. But if you now detach the conception from the caruncles, no blood is effused; none escapes, save from the ends of the vessels proceeding from the conception, although it does seem more consonant with reason to suppose that blood should be shed from the caruncles than from the conception when they are forcibly separated. For, as the caruncles or cotyledons have an abundance of uterine branches distributed to them, and they are generally believed to receive blood for the nourishment of the fœtus, we should expect that they would appear replete with blood. Nevertheless, as I have said, they yield no blood either under milking or compression, and the reason of this is that they contain albumen rather than blood, and rather store up than prepare this matter. It seems manifest, therefore, that the fœtus in utero is not nourished by its mother’s blood, but by this albuminous fluid duly elaborated. It may even be perhaps that the adult animal is not nourished immediately by the blood, but rather by something mixed with the blood, which serves as the ultimate aliment; as may perhaps be more particularly shown in our PHYSIOLOGY and particular treatise on the Blood.

The truth of that passage of Hippocrates[342] where it said that “those whose acetabula or cotyledons are full of mucor, abort,” has always been suspected by me; for this is no excrementitious matter or cause of miscarriage, but nourishment and a source of life. But Hippocrates, by the word acetabula, perhaps, understood something else than the parts so called in the uterus of the lower animals, for they are wanting in women; nor does the placenta in the human subject contain any collections of albuminous matter in distinct cavities.

Modern medical writers, following the Arabians, speak of three nutritious humours--dew, gluten, and cambium; these Fernelius designates nutritious juices; as if he had wished to imply that the parts of our bodies were not immediately nourished by the blood as ultimate nutriment, but by these secondary juices. The first of them, like dew, bathes all the minutest particles of the body on every side: this fluid, become thicker by an ulterior concoction, and adhering to the parts, is called gluten; finally, altered and assimilated by the proper virtue of the part, it is called cambium.

He who espoused such views might designate the matter which is contained in the cotyledonous cavities of the deer as gluten or nutritious albumen, and maintain that as the ultimate nourishment destined for each of the particular parts of the fœtus it was analogous to the albumen or vitellus of the egg. For as we but lately stated, with Aristotle, that the yelk of the egg was analogous to milk, so do we think it not unreasonable to assert, that the matter lodged in the cotyledons, or acetabula of the uterine placenta, stands instead of milk to the fœtus so long as it remains in the uterus; in this way the caruncles approve themselves a kind of internal mammæ, the nutritive matter of which, transferred at the period of parturition to the proper mammæ, there assumes the nature of milk, an arrangement by which the fœtus is seen to be nourished with the same food after it has begun its independent existence, as it was whilst it lodged in the uterus. Between the two-coloured eggs of oviparous animals, consequently, or the eggs that consist of a white and a yelk, and the ova or conceptions of viviparous animals, there is only this difference, that in the former the vitellus (which is a secondary nutritive matter) is prepared within the egg, and at the period of birth, being stored within the abdomen of the young creature, serves it as food; whilst in the latter, the nutritive juice is laid up within acetabula, and after birth is transferred to the mammæ; so that the chick is nourished with milk inclosed in its interior, whilst the fœtus of the viviparous animal draws its nourishment from the breasts of its mother.

In the months of January, February, &c., as nothing new or worthy of note occurs which has not been already mentioned, (more than the growth of the hair, teeth, horns, &c.) but the parts only grow larger without reference to the process of generation, it seems unnecessary to say more upon such points at present.

I have frequently examined the conceptions of sheep during the same intervals. These I find, as in the deer, extending into both horns of the uterus, and presenting the figure of a wallet or double sausage. In several of them I found two fœtuses; in others only one: they were without a trace of wool on the surface, and the eyelids were so closely glued together that they could not be opened; the hooves, however, were present. Where there were two embryos they were contained in the opposite horns of the uterus, and without any regard to sex with reference to the right or left horn, the male being sometimes in the right, sometimes in the left, and the female the same; both, however, were, in every instance, included within one and the same common external membrane or chorion. The extreme ends of this membrane were stained on either hand with a yellow or bilious excrement, and appeared to contain something turbid or excrementitious in their interior.

Many caruncles, or miniature placentas of different sizes, were discovered, and otherwise disposed than in the hind and doe. In the sheep they look like rounded fungi with the foot-stalks broken off, and are contained in the coats of the uterus; their rounded or convex aspects are turned to the uterus, (a circumstance, by the way, common to the cow and sheep,) their concave aspects, which are the smooth ones, being turned towards the fœtus. The larger branches of the vessels are also distributed to the concave portion, as in the human placenta. The branches in extension of the umbilical vessels connected with the caruncles, grow pretty firmly into them, so that when I attempted to separate them the rounded portion was rather torn from the interior of the uterus than from the ovum or conception; different, consequently, from what we observed in the deer, where the chorion was readily detached from the cotyledons of the caruncules, and where the convexity of the caruncule, connected with the conception, is separable, whilst the concavity, or rather the pedicle or root, is firmly adherent to the uterus. In other respects the function seems to be the same in both cases; in both the same acetabula are discovered, and the same viscid and albuminous mucus can be pressed out in both, as it can also in the cow.

In the conception that contains a single fœtus, the umbilical vessels are distributed to the whole of the caruncules of either horn; but the one in which the fœtus itself is contained, swimming in its crystalline fluid within the amnion, is larger than the other. In the cases where there are two fœtuses present, each has its own separate or appropriate caruncles, and does not send its umbilical vessels in quest of nourishment beyond the cornu in which it is lodged.

In male fœtuses, the testes contained in the scrotum, of large size for the age, hang externally. Female fœtuses, again, have their dugs in the same situation, furnished with nipples like the breasts of women.

In the compound stomach of the fœtus, namely the omasus and abomasus, a clear fluid is discovered, similar to that in which it floats; the two liquids agreeing obviously in smell, taste, and consistency. There is also a quantity of chyle in the upper part of the intestinal tube; in the inferior portion a greenish-coloured excrement and scybala, such as we find when the animal is feeding on grass. The liver is discovered of considerable size, the gall-bladder of an oblong shape, and in some cases empty.

In so far as the order in which the several parts are produced is concerned, we have still found the same rule to be observed in the hind and doe as in the egg, and we believe that the same law obtains among viviparous animals generally.

EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-FIRST.

_Of the innate heat._

As frequent mention is made in the preceding pages of the _calidum innatum_, or innate heat, I have determined to say a few words here, by way of dessert, both on that subject and on the _humidum primigenium_, or radical moisture, to which I am all the more inclined because I observe that many pride themselves upon the use of these terms without, as I apprehend, rightly understanding their meaning. There is, in fact, no occasion for searching after spirits foreign to, or distinct from, the blood; to evoke heat from another source; to bring gods upon the scene, and to encumber philosophy with any fanciful conceits; what we are wont to derive from the stars is in truth produced at home: the blood is the only calidum innatum, or first engendered animal heat; a fact which so clearly appears from our observations on animal reproduction, particularly of the chick from the egg, that it seems superfluous to multiply illustrations.

There is, indeed, nothing in the animal body older or more excellent than the blood; nor are the spirits which are distinguished from the blood at any time found distinct from it; for the blood without heat or spirit is no longer blood, but cruor or gore. “The blood,” says Aristotle,[343] “is hot in a certain manner, in that, namely, in virtue of which it exists as blood,--just as we speak of hot-water under a single term; as subject, however, and in itself finally, blood is blood, it is not _hot_: so that as blood is in a certain way hot _per se_, so is it also in a certain way not hot _per se_: heat is in its essence or nature, in the same way as whiteness is in the essence of a white man; but where blood is by affection or passion, it is not hot _per se_.”

We physicians at this time designate that as spirit which Hippocrates called _impetum faciens_, or moving power; implying by this whatever attempts aught by its own proper effort, and causes motion with rapidity and force, or induces action of any kind; in this sense we are accustomed to speak of spirit of wine, spirit of vitriol, &c. And therefore it is that physicians admit as many spirits as there are principal parts or operations of the body, viz. animal, vital, natural, visual, auditory, concoctive, generative, implanted, influent, &c. &c. But the blood is the first produced and most principal part of the body, endowed with each and all of these virtues, possessed of powers of action beyond all the rest, and therefore, κατ’ ἐξοχὴ--in virtue of its pre-eminence, meriting the title of spirit.

Scaliger, Fernelius, and others, giving less regard to the admirable qualities of the blood, have imagined other spirits of an aerial or ethereal nature, or composed of an ethereal or elementary matter, a something more excellent and divine than the innate heat, the immediate instrument of the soul, fitted for all the highest duties. Now their principal motive for this was the consideration that the blood, as composed of elements, could have no power of action beyond these elements or the bodies compounded of them. They have, therefore, feigned or imagined a spirit, different from the ingenerate heat, of celestial origin and nature; a body of perfect simplicity, most subtile, attenuated, mobile, rapid, lucid, ethereal, participant in the qualities of the quintessence. They have not, however, anywhere demonstrated the actual existence of such a spirit, or that it was superior to the elements in its powers of action, or indeed that it could accomplish more than the blood by itself. We, for our own parts, who use our simple senses in studying natural things, have been unable anywhere to find anything of the sort. Neither are there any cavities for the production and preservation of such spirits, either in fact or presumed by their authors. Fernelius, indeed, has these words:[344] “He who has not yet completely mastered the matter and state of the ingenerate heat, let him cast an eye upon the structure of the body, and turn to the arteries, and contemplate the sinuses of the heart and the ventricles of the brain. When he observes them empty, containing next to no fluid, and yet feels that he must own such parts not made in vain, or without a design, he will soon, I conceive, be brought to conclude that an extremely subtile aura or vapour fills them during the life of the animal, and which, as being of extreme lightness, vanished insensibly when the creature died. It is for the sake of cherishing this aura that by inspiration we take in air, which not only serves for the refrigeration of the body, by a business that might be otherwise accomplished, but further supplies a kind of nourishment.”

But we maintain that so long as an animal lives, the cavities of the heart and the arteries are filled with blood. We further believe the ventricles of the brain to be indifferently fitted for any so excellent office, and that they are rather formed for secreting some excrementitious matter. What shall we say, too, when we find the brain of many animals unfurnished with ventricles? And supposing it were true that any kind of air or vapour was found there, seeing that all nature abhors a vacuum, still it does not seem over probable that it should be of heavenly origin and possessed of such superlative virtues. But what we admire most of all is that a spirit, the native of the skies, and endowed with such admirable qualities, should be nourished by our common and elementary air; especially when we see it maintained that the elements can do nothing that is beyond their natural powers.

It is admitted, moreover, that the spirits are in a perpetual state of flux, and most readily dissipated and corrupted; nor indeed can they endure for an instant unless renovated by due supplies of their appropriate nutriment,--they as much require incessant nourishing as the primum vivens, or first animate atom of the body. What occasion is there, then, I ask, for this extraneous inmate, for this ethereal heat? when the blood is competent to perform all the offices ascribed to it, and the spirits cannot separate from the blood even by a hair’s breadth without destruction; without the blood, indeed, the spirits can neither move nor penetrate anywhere as distinct and independent matters. And whether they are engendered and are fed and increased, as some suppose, from the thinner part of the blood, or from the primigenial moisture, as others imagine, all still confess that they are nowhere to be found apart from the blood, but are inseparably connected with it as the aliment that sustains them, even as the flame of a lamp or candle is inseparably connected with the oil or tallow that feeds it. The tenuity, subtilty, mobility, &c. of the spirits, therefore, bring no kind of advantage more than the blood, which it seems they constantly accompany, already possesses. The blood consequently suffices, and is adequate to be the immediate instrument of the soul, inasmuch as it is everywhere present, and moves hither and thither with the greatest rapidity. Nor can it be admitted that there are any other bodies or qualities of a spiritual and incorporeal nature, or any more divine kinds of heat, such as light, as Cæsar Cremoninus,[345] a great adept in the Aristotelian philosophy, strenuously contends against Albertus that there are.

If it be said that these spirits reside in the primigenial moisture as in their ultimate aliment, and flow from thence through the whole body to nourish its several parts, they propound a simple impossibility, viz. that the ingenerate heat, that primigenial element of the body, nourished itself, yet serves for the nourishment of the body at large. Upon such grounds the thing nourished and the thing that nourishes would be one and the same, and itself would both nourish and be nourished; which could in no way be effected; inasmuch as it is by no means probable that the nourishment should ever be mixed with the thing nourished, for things mixed must have equal powers and mutually act on one another; and, according to Aristotle’s dictum, “where there is nutrition, there there is no mixture.” But as nutrition takes place everywhere, the nutriment is one thing, and that which is nourished by it is another, and it is altogether indispensable that the one pass into the other.

But as it is thought that the spirits, and the ultimate or primigenial aliment, or something else, is contained in animals which acts in a greater degree than the blood above the forces of the elements, we are not sufficiently informed what is understood by the expression, “acting above the forces of the elements;” neither are Aristotle’s words rightly interpreted where he says,[346] “every virtue or faculty of the soul appears to partake of another body more divine than those which are called elements.... For there is in every seed a certain something which causes it to be fruitful, viz. what is called heat, and that not fire or any faculty of the kind, but a spirit such as is contained in semen and frothy bodies; and the nature inherent in that spirit is responsive in its proportions to the element of the stars. Wherefore fire engenders no animal; neither is anything seen to be constituted of the dense, or moist, or dry. But the heat of the sun and of animals, and not only that which is stored up in semen, but even that of any excrementitious matter, although diverse in nature, still contains a vital principle. For the rest, it is obvious from this that the heat contained in animals is not fire, neither does it derive its origin from fire.” Now I maintain the same things of the innate heat and the blood; I say that they are not fire, and neither do they derive their origin from fire. They rather share the nature of some other, and that a more divine body or substance. They act by no faculty or property of the elements; but as there is a something inherent in the semen which makes it prolific, and as, in producing an animal, it surpasses the power of the elements,--as it is a spirit, namely, and the inherent nature of that spirit corresponds to the essence of the stars,--so is there a spirit, or certain force, inherent in the blood, acting superiorly to the powers of the elements, very conspicuously displayed in the nutrition and preservation of the several parts of the animal body; and the nature, yea, the soul in this spirit and blood, is identical with the essence of the stars. That the heat of the blood of animals during their lifetime, therefore, is neither fire, nor derived from fire, is manifest, and indeed is clearly demonstrated by our observations.

But that this may be made still more certain let me be permitted to digress a little from my subject, and, in a few words, to show what is meant by the word “spirit,” and what by the phrases “superior in action to the forces of the elements,” “to have the properties of another body, and that more divine than those bodies which are called elements,” and “the nature inherent in this spirit which answers to the essence of the stars.”

We have already had occasion to say something both of the nature of” spirit” and “ the vital principle,” and we shall here enter into the subject at greater length. There are three bodies--simple bodies--which seem especially entitled to receive the name, at all events, to perform the office of “spirit,” viz. fire, air, and water, each of which, by reason of its ceaseless flux and motion, expressed by the words flame, wind, and flood, appears to have the properties of life, or of some other body. Flame is the flow of fire, wind the flow of air, stream or flood the flow of water. Flame, like an animal, is self-motive, self-nutrient, self-augmentative, and is the symbol of our life. It is therefore that it is so universally brought into requisition in religious ceremonies: it was guarded by priestesses and virgins in the temples of Apollo and Vesta as a sacred thing, and from the remotest antiquity has been held worthy of divine worship by the Persians and other ancient nations; as if God were most conspicuous in flame, and spoke to us from fire as he did to Moses of old. Air is also appropriately spoken of as “spirit,” having received the title from the act of respiration. Aristotle[347] himself admits, “that there is a kind of life, and birth, and death of the winds.” Finally, we speak of a running stream as “living water.”

These three, therefore, inasmuch as they have a kind of life, appear to act superiorly to the forces of the element, and to share in a more divine nature; they were, therefore, placed among the number of the divinities by the heathen. When any excellent work or process appeared, surpassing the powers of the naked elements, it was held as proceeding from some more divine agent. “To act with power superior to the powers of the elements,” therefore, and, on that account, “to share in the properties of some more divine thing, which does not derive its origin from the elements,” appear to have the same signification.

The blood, in like manner, “acts with powers superior to the powers of the elements” in the fact of its existence, in the forms of primordial and innate heat, in semen and spirit, and its producing all the other parts of the body in succession; proceeding at all times with such foresight and understanding, and with definite ends in view, as if it employed reasoning in its acts. Now this it does not, in so far as it is elementary, and as deriving its origin from fire, but in so far as it is possessed of plastic powers and endowed with the gift of the vegetative soul, as it is the primordial and innate heat, and the immediate and competent instrument of life. Αίμα, τὸ ζωτικὸν τοῡ ἀνθρωπου: The blood is the living principle of man, says Suidas; and the same thing is true of all animals; an opinion which Virgil seems to have wished to express when he says:

“Una eademque via sanguisque animusque sequuntur.”
And by one path the blood and life flowed out.

The blood, therefore, by reason of its admirable properties and powers, is “spirit.” It is also celestial; for nature, the soul, that which answers to the essence of the stars, is the inmate of the spirit, in other words, it is something analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven, vicarious of heaven.

In this way all natural bodies fall to be considered under a twofold point of view, viz. either as they are specially regarded, and are comprehended within the limits of their own proper nature, or are viewed as the instruments of some more noble agent and superior power. For as regards their peculiar powers, there is, perhaps, no doubt but that all things subject to generation by birth, and to death and decay, derive their origin from the elements, and perform their offices agreeably to their proper standard; but in so far as they are the instruments of a more excellent agent, and are governed by that, not acting of their own proper nature, but by the regimen of another; therefore is it, therein is it, that they seem to participate with another and more divine body, and to surpass the powers of the ordinary elements.

In the same way, too, is the blood the animal heat, in so far, namely, as it is governed in its actions by the soul; for it is celestial as subservient to heaven; and divine, because it is the instrument of God the great and good. But this we have already spoken of above, where we have shown that male and female were the instruments of the sun, heaven, and Supreme Preserver, when they served for the generation of the more perfect animals.

The inferior world, according to Aristotle, is so continuous and connected with the superior orbits, that all its motions and changes appear to take their rise and to receive direction from thence. In that world, indeed, which the Greeks called Κόσμος from its order and beauty, inferior and corruptible things wait upon superior and incorruptible things; but all are still subservient to the will of the supreme, omnipotent, and eternal Creator.

They, therefore, who think that nothing composed of the elements can show powers of action superior to the forces exercised by these, unless they at the same time partake of some other and more divine body, and on this ground conceive the spirits they evoke as constituted partly of the elements, partly of a certain ethereal and celestial substance--these persons, I say, appear to me to reason indifferently. In the first place you will scarcely find any elementary body which in acting does not exceed its proper powers: air and water, the winds and the ocean, when they waft navies to either India and round this globe, and often by opposite courses, when they grind, bake, dig, pump, saw timber, sustain fire, support some things, overwhelm others, and suffice for an infinite variety of other and most admirable offices--who shall say that they do not surpass the powers of the elements? In like manner what does not fire accomplish? in the kitchen, in the furnace, in the laboratory, [in the steam-engine], softening, hardening, melting, subliming, changing, [and setting in motion], in an infinite variety of ways! What shall we say of it when we see iron itself produced by its agency?--iron “that breaks the stubborn soil, and shakes the earth with war!”--iron that in the magnet (to which Thales therefore ascribed a soul) attracts other iron, “subdues all other things, and seeks besides I know not what inane,” as Pliny[348] says; for the steel needle only rubbed with the loadstone still steadily points to the great cardinal points; and when our clocks constantly indicate the hours of the day and night,--shall we not admit that all of these partake of something else, and that of a more divine nature, than the elements? And if in the domain and rule of nature so many excellent operations are daily effected surpassing the powers of the things themselves, what shall we not think possible within the pale and regimen of nature, of which all art is but imitation? And if, as ministers of man, they effect such admirable ends, what, I ask, may we not expect of them, when they are instruments in the hand of God?

We must, therefore, make the distinction and say, that whilst no primary agent or prime efficient produces effects beyond its powers, every instrumental agent may exceed its own proper powers in action; for it acts not merely by its own virtue, but by the virtue of a superior efficient.

They, consequently, who refuse such remarkable faculties to the blood, and go to heaven to fetch down I know not what spirits, to which they ascribe these divine virtues, cannot know, or at all events, cannot consider that the process of generation, and even of nutrition, which indeed is a kind of generation, for the sake of which they are so lavish of admirable properties, surpasses the powers of those very spirits themselves, nor of the spirits only, but of the vegetative, aye, even the sensitive, and I will venture to add, the rational soul. Powers, did I say? It far exceeds even any estimate we can form of the rational soul; for the nature of generation, and the order that prevails in it, are truly admirable and divine, beyond all that thought can conceive or understanding comprehend.

That it may, however, more clearly appear that the remarkable virtues which the learned attribute to the spirits and the innate heat belong to the blood alone, besides what has already been spoken of as conspicuous in the egg before any trace of the embryo appears, as well as in the perfect and adult fœtus, the few following observations are made by way of further illustration, and for the sake of the diligent inquirer. The blood considered absolutely and by itself, without the veins, in so far as it is an elementary fluid, and composed of several parts--of thin and serous particles, and of thick and concrete particles called cruor--possesses but few, and these not very obvious virtues. Contained within the veins, however, inasmuch as it is an integral part of the body, and is animated, regenerative, and the immediate instrument and principal seat of the soul, inasmuch, moreover, as it seems to partake of the nature of another more divine body, and is transfused by divine animal heat, it obtains remarkable and most excellent powers, and is analogous to the essence of the stars. In so far as it is spirit, it is the hearth, the Vesta, the household divinity, the innate heat, the sun of the microcosm, the fire of Plato; not because like common fire it lightens, burns, and destroys, but because by a vague and incessant motion it preserves, nourishes, and aggrandizes itself. It farther deserves the name of spirit, inasmuch as it is radical moisture, at once the ultimate and the proximate and the primary aliment, more abundant than all the other parts; preparing for and administering to these the same nutriment with which itself is fed, ceaselessly permeating the whole body, cherishing and keeping alive the parts which it has fashioned and added to itself, not otherwise assuredly than the superior stars, the sun and moon especially, in maintaining their own proper orbits, continually vivify the stars that are beneath them.

Since the blood acts, then, with forces superior to the forces of the elements, and exerts its influence through these forces or virtues, and is the instrument of the Great Workman, no one can ever sufficiently extol its admirable, its divine faculties. In the first place, and especially, it is possessed by a soul which is not only vegetative, but sensitive and motive also; it penetrates everywhere and is ubiquitous; abstracted, the soul or the life too is gone, so that the blood does not seem to differ in any respect from the soul or the life itself (anima); at all events, it is to be regarded as the substance whose act is the soul or the life. Such, I say, is the soul, which is neither wholly corporeal nor yet wholly incorporeal; which is derived in part from abroad, and is partly produced at home; which in one way is part of the body, but in another way is the beginning and cause of all that is contained in the animal body, viz. nutrition, sense, and motion, and consequently of life and of death alike; for whatever is nourished, is itself vivified, and _vice versa_. In like manner, that which is abundantly nourished increases; what is not sufficiently supplied shrinks; what is perfectly nourished preserves its health; what is not perfectly nourished falls into disease. The blood, therefore, even as the soul, is to be regarded as the cause and author of youth and old age, of sleep and waking, and also of respiration; all the more and especially as the first instrument in natural things contains the internal moving cause within itself. It therefore comes to the same thing, whether we say that the soul and the blood, or the blood with the soul, or the soul with the blood, performs all the acts in the animal organism.

We are too much in the habit, neglecting things, of worshipping specious names. The word blood, signifying a substance, which we have before our eyes, and can touch, has nothing of grandiloquence about it; but before such titles as spirits, and calidum innatum or innate heat, we stand agape. But the mask removed, as the error disappears, so does the idle admiration. The celebrated stone, so much vaunted for its virtues by Pipinus to Migaldus, seems to have filled not only him but also Thuanus, an excellent historian, with wonder and admiration. Let me be allowed to append the riddle: “Lately,” says he, “there was brought from the East Indies to our king a stone, which we have seen, wonderfully radiant with light and effulgence, the whole of which, as if burning and in flames, was resplendent with an incredible brilliancy of light. Tossed hither and thither, it filled the ambient air with beams that were scarcely bearable by any eyes. It was also extremely impatient of the earth; if you essayed to cover it, it forthwith and of itself burst forth with violence, and mounted on high. No man could by any art contain or inclose it in any confined place; on the contrary, it appears to delight in free and spacious places. It is of the highest purity, of the greatest brightness, and is without stain or blemish. It has no certain shape, but a shape uncertain and changing every moment. Of the most consummate beauty, it suffers no one to touch it; and if you persist too long or obstinately, it will do you injury, as I have observed it repeatedly to do in no trifling measure. If anything be by chance taken from it by persevering efforts, it is (strange to say) made nothing less thereby. Its custodier adds farther, that its virtues and powers are useful in a great variety of ways, and even--especially to kings--indispensably necessary; but these he declines to reveal without being first paid a large reward.” The author might have added of this _stone_ that it was neither hard nor soft, and exhibited a variety of forms and colours, and had a singular trick of trembling and palpitating, and like an animal--although itself inanimate--consumed a large quantity of food every day for its nutrition or sustenance. Farther, that he had heard from men worthy of credit, that this stone had formerly fallen from heaven to earth; that it was the frequent cause of thunder and lightning, and was still occasionally engendered from the solar beams refracted through water.

Who would not admire so remarkable a stone, or believe that it acted with a force superior to the forces of the elements, that it participated in the nature of another body, and possessed an ethereal spirit? especially when he found that it responded in its proportions to the essence of the sun. But with Fernelius[349] for Œdipus, we find the whole enigma resolving itself into “Flame.”

In the same way, did I paint the blood under the garb of a fable, and gave it the title of the philosopher’s stone, and propose all its wonderful faculties and operations in enigmatical language, many would doubtless think a great deal of it; they would readily believe that it could act with powers superior to those of the elements, and they would not unwillingly allow it to be possessed of another and more divine body.

EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-SECOND.

_Of the primigenial moisture._

We have now dignified the blood with the title of the innate heat; with like propriety, we believe, that the fluid which we have called the crystalline colliquament, from which the fœtus and its parts primarily and immediately arise, may be designated the radical and primigenial moisture. There is certainly nothing in the generation of animals to which this title can with better right be given.

We call this the radical moisture, because from it arises the first particle of the embryo, the blood, to wit; and all the other posthumous parts arise from it as from a root; and they are procreated and nourished, and grow and are preserved by the same matter.

We also call it primigenial, because it is first engendered in every animal organism, and is, as it were, the foundation of the rest; as may be seen in the egg, in which it presents itself after a brief period of incubation, as the first work of the inherent fecundity and reproductive power.