It will not be foreign to the subject if I here show further,
from certain familiar reasonings, that the circulation is matter
both of convenience and necessity. In the first place, since
death is a corruption which takes place through deficiency of
heat, [Footnote: Aristoteles De Respirations, lib. ii et iii: De
Part. Animal. et alibi.] and since all living things are warm,
all dying things cold, there must be a particular seat and
fountain, a kind of home and hearth, where the cherisher of
nature, the original of the native fire, is stored and preserved;
from which heat and life are dispensed to all parts as from a
fountain head; from which sustenance may be derived; and upon
which concoction and nutrition, and all vegetative energy may
depend. Now, that the heart is this place, that the heart is the
principle of life, and that all passes in the manner just
mentioned, I trust no one will deny.
The blood, therefore, required to have motion, and indeed such a
motion that it should return again to the heart; for sent to the
external parts of the body far from its fountain, as Aristotle
says, and without motion it would become congealed. For we see
motion generating and keeping up heat and spirits under ail
circumstances, and rest allowing them to escape and be
dissipated. The blood, therefore, becoming thick or congealed by
the cold of the extreme and outward parts, and robbed of its
spirits, just as it is in the dead, it was imperative that from
its fount and origin, it should again receive heat and spirits,
and all else requisite to its preservation--that, by returning,
it should be renovated and restored.
We frequently see how the extremities are chilled by the external
cold, how the nose and cheeks and hands look blue, and how the
blood, stagnating in them as in the pendent or lower parts of a
corpse, becomes of a dusky hue; the limbs at the same time
getting torpid, so that they can scarcely be moved, and seem
almost to have lost their vitality. Now they can by no means be
so effectually, and especially so speedily restored to heat and
colour and life, as by a new efflux and contact of heat from its
source. But how can parts attract in which the heat and life are
almost extinct? Or how should they whose passages are filled with
condensed and frigid blood, admit fresh aliment--renovated blood
--unless they had first got rid of their old contents? Unless the
heart were truly that fountain where life and heat are restored
to the refrigerated fluid, and whence new blood, warm, imbued
with spirits, being sent out by the arteries, that which has
become cooled and effete is forced on, and all the particles
recover their heat which was failing, and their vital stimulus
wellnigh exhausted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account