Arcana microcosmi, or, The hid secrets of man's body discovered in an anatomical duel between Aristotle and Galen concerning the parts thereof : as also, by a discovery of the strange and marveilous diseases, symptomes & accidents of man's body : with a refutation of Doctor Brown's Vulgar errors, the Lord Bacon's natural history, and Doctor Harvy's book, De generatione, Comenius, and others : whereto is annexed a letter from Doctor Pr. to the author, and his answer thereto, touching Doctor Harvy's book De Generatione / by A.R.

CAP. VI.

1. Two sorts of bloud; the heart first liveth, and is nourished, and the original of bloud, not the liver. 2. The hearts action on Vena cava; the cause of sanguification. 3. Bloud caused by the heart. 4. How every part draws. 5. Heart the first principle of the nerves. 6. Nerves, how instruments of sense and motion. 7. The same nerves serve for sense and motion.

I. THERE are in our bodies two sorts of blood, the one arte∣rial, begot in the heart, for the exciting of our heat; the other venal, begot in the liver, for nourishing of the body: ••o according to Aristotle, the heart; and according to Galen,

the liver may be called the fountain of bloud. 2. As the heart is the first thing that liveth in us, so it must needs be first nou∣rished, for life cannot be without nutriment, & nutriment can∣not be without blood, therefore there must needs be blood in the heart before there was any in the liver. 3. As the heart first liveth, so it first operates, for life consists in operation: but the proper work of the heart is to beget arterial blood and vital spirits, therefore the blood was first in the heart. 4. Though blood resemble the liver in colour, it will not therefore follow that blood hath its first original from the liver, but only that it is the receptacle and cystern of blood; so the bag, in which the gall lieth, hath the same colour with the gall, and yet this is generated in the liver, and onely contained in the bag; and its a question, whether the liver coloureth the blood, or the blood the liver. 5. In fear and sadness, the blood retires in∣to the heart, which is by means of the spirits recoiling thither with the blood, as to their original. 6. In the brain we finde four sensible concavities for the animall spirits; in the heart two, for the blood and vital spirits; but in the liver none, for the blood; in the resticles none, for the seed; nor in the breast for the milk; which makes me doubt, whether the blood, seed, and milk, have any concoction in these parts, if they have, it must be surely in a very small quantity. 7. I finde pure blood no where but in the heart and veins; by which I gather that there must be a greater commerce between the heart and veins, then some doe conceive, which appears also by the implanta∣tion of the vena cava in the heart, which cannot be separated without tearing of the heart or vein; and that either the blood is perfected in the heart, and prepared in the liver, or else prepared in the heart, and perfected in the liver: besides, that the arteries doe all along accompany the veins.

II. I see no reason why we may not affirm, that the heart is continually in its Diastole, drawing blood out of the vena cava; and in its Systole or contraction, refunding blood into the same vein: for this continual motion of the blood, is no more impossible then the continual motion of the heart and arteries; neither is it more absurd for perfect and imperfect blood to bee mingled in this motion, then for cholerick, melancholick and flegmatick blood, to be mingled with pure blood in the veins. 2. When the liver is vitiated, sanguification faileth, and so hydropsies follow, which doth not prove that the liver is the sole cause of sanguification, but that it is subordinate to the heart: so when the Chrystalline humour is vitiated, the sight

faileth, and yet this humour is not the sole cause of fight, but is subordinate to the op••ick nerve and spirits. The heart then by the liver distributes blood to the members. 3. The veins have their radication in the liver, their office and distribution from the liver and the heart: their original from neither▪ in re∣spect of matter, but in respect of efficiency from the heart; for this first liveth, and therefore the fittest place for the forma∣tive faculty to reside in.

III. The Chylus is turned into blood, not by the substance of the Liver, for the Chylus comes not neer it, and there can be no alteration or concoction without contact: nor by the veins, for their office is to convey and distribute the bloud, not to make it. So the arteries doe not make the arterial blood, which they convey: besides tha•• the form, temperament, and colour of the blood is far different from that of the veins; ther∣fore the blood is made by the power of that celestial heat by which we receive life, growth, and nutriment: for the same heat produceth divers effects in the divers subjects it works up∣on; in the stomach it turns our meat into a white Chylus; in the veins into red blood: in the ••eminal vessels into seed, in the breasts into milk, &c.

IV. The same Meseraick veins which draw the purest pare of the Chylus from the intestins, that it might there receive sanguification, contain also pure blood, which the intestines draw for their nutriment, for every part draws that food which it most delights in. Thus from the same mass of blood, the Spleen draws melancholy, the gall choler, the kidneys, water.

V. The Peripateticks will have the heart to be the first ori∣ginal of the nerves, and of the sensitive motion: The Galenists will have the brain; but this contention is needless: For the heart is the first principle, because it is the first that lives and moves, whereas the brain moves not but by the heart. In a Syncope, or swowning fit of the heart, all sense and motion suddenly fail, which could not be if these had not their origi∣nal from the heart: the brain may be called the secondary or subordinate caus or principle: for this by its cold, tempers the vital spirits, and so they become sensitive or animal. Hence it is that in an Apoplexy there is a sudden failing of sense and motion. If any say, that the body can move after the heart is taken out, and that therefore the heart cannot be the first prin∣ciple of motion: I answer, so can the body move after the head is off, as wee see in Poultry. This motion then ex∣cludes neither the head nor heart from being originals: for

it is caused by the remainder of the spirits, which are left in the nerves and arteries. As for the Apoplexy, I take it to bee an affection, not of the brains alone, but of the nerves also.

VI. The common opinion is, that the nerves are the in∣struments of sense and motion: and yet we see sense and mo∣tion where there are no nerves: for in every part of the bo∣dy there are not nerves, and yet every part feels and moves: this sense and motion must needs proceed from the spirits in the blood, which is in every part of the flesh and skin, where there are no veins. If it be replyed, that upon the obstructi∣on, or binding of the nerve, sense and motion fail: I an∣swer, the like failing there is of sense and motion, when the arteries called Carotides, are bound up; for as the animal spi∣rits will not work without the vital, neither will the spirits in the blood and flesh work, if they fail which are in the n••rves, such is the union amongst them, that this failing, all action ceaseth.

VII. Seeing the sensitive and motive Spirits differ not specifically, there is no need why wee should assign different nerves to sense and motion; for the same neve serves to both; it is true, that there be some hard, some soft nerves, because some have their original from the soft brain, and some from the harder pith of the baek bone; and that the soft nerve is fittest f••r sense, which consisteth in reception, for soft things are aptest to receive impressions; as the hard nerve is fittest for motion which consisteth in action; therefore the same nerve conveyeth sense to all parts capable of sense, and motion to the parts apt to be moved: Hence the nerves inserted in the muscles, move them; but the nerves inserted into the mouth of the stomach, moves it not, b••cause the stomach hath no muscles, yet it communicates to it, an ex∣quisite sense.