To those who object to the circulation as throwing obstacles in the way of their explanations of the phenomena that occur in medical cases (and there are persons who will not be content to take up with a new system, unless it explains everything, as in astronomy), and who oppose it with their own erroneous assumptions, such as that, if it be true, phlebotomy cannot cause revulsion, seeing that the blood will still continue to be forced into the affected part; that the passage of excrementitious matters and foul humours through the heart, that most noble and principal viscus, is to be apprehended; that an efflux and excretion, occasionally of foul and corrupt blood, takes place from the same body, from different parts, even from the same part and at the same time, which, were the blood agitated by a continuous current, would be shaken and effectually mixed in passing through the heart, and many points of the like kind admitted in our medical schools, which are seen to be repugnant to the doctrine of the circulation,--to them I shall not answer farther here, than that the circulation is not always the same in every place, and at every time, but is contingent upon many circumstances: the more rapid or slower motion of the blood, the strength or weakness of the heart as the propelling organ, the quantity and quality or constitution of the blood, the rigidity or laxity of the tissues, and the like. A thicker blood, of course, moves more slowly through narrower channels; it is more effectually strained in its passage through the substance of the liver than through that of the lungs. It has not the same velocity through flesh and the softer parenchymatous structures and through sinewy parts of greater compactness and consistency: for the thinner and purer and more spirituous part permeates more quickly, the thicker more earthy and indifferently concocted portion moves more slowly, or is refused admission. The nutritive portion, or ultimate aliment of the tissues, the dew or cambium, is of a more penetrating nature, inasmuch as it has to be added everywhere, and to everything that grows and is nourished in its length and thickness, even to the horns, nails, hair and feathers; and then the excrementitious matters have to be secreted in some places, where they accumulate, and either prove a burthen or are concocted. But I do not imagine that the excrementitious fluids or bad humours when once separated, nor the milk, the phlegm, and the spermatic fluid, nor the ultimate nutritive part, the dew or cambium, necessarily circulate with the blood: that which nourishes every part adheres and becomes agglutinated to it. Upon each of these topics and various others besides, to be discussed and demonstrated in their several places, viz., in the physiology and other parts of the art of medicine, as well as of the consequences, advantages or disadvantages of the circulation of the blood, I do not mean to touch here; it were fruitless indeed to do so