QVEST. XXIIII. Whether the Infant be nourished onely with bloud, and whether he accomplish onely one Concoction.
COncerning the Nature and kinde of Aliment wherewith the tender Embryo is nourished so long as hee is contayned within the mothers wombe, there is no light Controuersie. Hippocrates thought that he was nourished with the pu∣rest * 1.1 part of his mothers blood. To this purpose there is an elegant place in his first Booke de morbis mulierum. A woman with child (saith he) is all ouer of a greenish pallid colour, because her pure bloud is dayly drawne from her, and descendeth to the nou∣rishment of the Infant. Galen in his first Booke de causis symptomatum and the 7. Chapter saith that the small and tender Infant drawes in the first moneths the purest of the blood, but when he is growne greater, he draweth the pure and impure together.
Hippocrates in his Booke de Natura puert, wrote many things but very obscurely, concer∣ning the Aliment of the Infant: for he acknowledgeth a double Aliment, Bloud & Milke. * 1.2 In the first moneths he thinkes the Infant is nourished with pure bloud: but when he begin∣neth to moue, that then a part of the bloud returneth to the Pappes, and is there turned into Milk, and from thence commeth againe to the wombe by the communion of the veines for the nourish∣ment of the Infant; as if the bloud were circularly conuayed from, and to the wombe againe as Chymists vse to do in their destillations. But I see not either why, or how the Infāt should be nourished with Milke, seeing al his Aliment is carried first by the veines vnto the Liuer: Vnlesse we shall say that the Infant growne great is nourished with Milk, that is with bloud * 1.3 contayned in the veines of the Pappes, which commeth neare to the Nature of Milk. For when the bloud is exhausted or drawn out of the first veines, he draweth bloud from other veines, especially from such as are more common and ample or large. Now the socrety of the veines of the wombe and the Paps is admirable. Here some man may aske how the * 1.4 Infant can draw pure bloud seeing it hath much whey mingled therewith, which is proo∣ued by the collection of the vrine? I answere that the naturall whey doeth not take away * 1.5 the puritie of the blood, yea if it wanted his whey it were not pure but altogether faulty: and Hippocrates alwayes disalloweth of that bloud which is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 that is, sincere and vn∣mixt.
The third thing to be enquired off remaineth, that is, how the Aliment of the Infant is * 1.6 changed and altered, whether it passe through the three concoctions, or but two, or onely one? Some Imagine that the blood is conueyed by the vmbilicall veine to the branches of the gate veine, from these vnto the stomacke where it is conuerted into a substance like vn∣to Creame, and thence by the branches of the mesentery transported to the Liuer, and by it turned into blood, and so is made by Chylification and Sanguification in the Infant. For blood if it be taken at the mouth and swallowed into the stomacke, putteth of his forme of blood, and acquireth a new forme of Creame. For my selfe if I may speake as I thinke, I conceiue that there is but one concoction in the Infant; for what neede is there of Chyli∣fication or of a new Sanguification, seeing he draweth the purest of his mothers blood? I confesse that it is perfected and further boyled as well in the greater as in the lesser vessels, that so there may be the greater similitude betweene the Infant and his nourishment; but that it should acquire a new forme, that will not sinke into my minde; for the bloud remai∣neth bloud and hath the same power of nourishing it had before, onely it differeth in per∣fection and in some accidents.