You have also studied the capillaries in the frog’s foot; you have seen
that they are minute channels, with the thinnest and tenderest walls,
forming a close network in which the smallest arteries end, and from
which the smallest veins begin.
You have moreover been told that all over your own body, in every part,
there are, though you cannot see them, networks of capillaries like
those in the frog’s foot which you can see; that all the arteries of
your body end in capillaries, and all the veins begin in capillaries.
Let me repeat that, one or two structures excepted, there is no part of
your body in which, could you put it under a microscope, you would not
see a small artery branching out and losing itself in a network of
capillaries, out of which, as out of so many roots, a small vein gathers
itself together again.
In some places the network is very close, the capillaries lying closer
together than even in the frog’s foot; in others the network is more
open, and the capillaries wider apart; but everywhere, with a few
exceptions which you will learn by and by, there are capillaries,
arteries, and veins.
Suppose you were a little lone red corpuscle, all by yourself in the
quite empty blood-vessels of a dead body, squeezed in the narrow pathway
of a capillary, say of the biceps muscle of the arm, able to walk
about, and anxious to explore the country in which you found yourself.
There would be two ways in which you might go. Let us first imagine that
you set out in the way which we will call backwards. Squeezing your way
along the narrow passage of the capillary in which you had hardly room
to move, you would at every few steps pass, on your right hand and on
your left, the openings into other capillary channels as small as the
one in which you were. Passing by these you would presently find the
passage widening, you would have more room to move, and the more
openings you passed, the wider and higher would grow the tunnel in which
you were groping your way. The walls of the tunnel would grow thicker at
every step, and their thickness and stoutness would tell you that you
were already in an artery, but the inside would be delightfully smooth.
As you went on you would keep passing the openings into similar tunnels,
but the further you went on, the fewer they would be. Sometimes the
tunnels into which these openings led would be smaller, sometimes
bigger, sometimes of the same size as the one in which you were.
Sometimes one would be so much bigger, that it would seem absurd to say
that it opened into your tunnel. On the contrary, it would appear to you
that you were passing out of a narrow side passage into a great wide
thoroughfare. I dare say you would notice that every time one passage
opened into another the way suddenly grew wider, and then kept about the
same size until it joined the next. Travelling onwards in this way, you
would after a while find yourself in a great wide tunnel, so big that
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