to be tubulous and hollow And therefore however though the learned Doctor Brown my ever honoured friend hath ranked this conceit of the Eyes of a Snail and especially their quadruplicity amongst the Vulgar errours of the multitude yet through a good Microscope he may easily see his own errour and Nature's most admirable variety in the plurality paucity and anomalous Situation of eyes and the various fabrick and motion of that excellent organ as our Observations will more particularly inform him If by a dextrous Dissection you would see the internal Fabrick of this Animal there are many excellent things that will recompence your curiosity For first you may find her Heart just over against that round hole near her neck which Doctor Harvey ingeniously conjectures to be the place of their respiration which hole you may observe to open and shut as she moves or stands still and out of which I have observed some salivous Matter to be evacuated We have observ'd her Heart to beat fairly for a quarter of an hour after her dissection afterwards we took out her guts which were of a pure green colour by reason of the thinness of their film and transparency of the green juice of hearbs with which they were repleated They were all diaper'd or branched over with pure white Capillary little veins which by help of the Microscope we could discern to be hollow with a blackish kind of pith running through the midst of the smallest of them which doubtless was their nutrimental juice coagulated there like the bloud starkn'd in the veins of dead Animals They are mouthed like a Hare or Rabbit with four or six needle-teeth like those in Leeches Nay this poor Animal how contemptible soever it may seem hath a whole Sett of the same parts and organs with other Animals as Heart Liver Spleen Stomach Guts Mouth and Teeth Veins and Arteries Yea and a pair more of the noblest of the Senses the Eyes Nay this Animal doth autoptically evince us that as sanguineous and more perfect Animals have a circulation of their bloud within them so this more ignoble creature hath also a circulation of its nutritive humour which is to it as Bloud is to other Animals Nay further which is the best Remarkable of all this juice hath not onely a circular motion but also the very Animal Spirits by which she moves seem to have the like Circulation For if you observe her with the bare eye to creep up the sides of a glass you shall see a little stream of clouds channel up her belly from her tail to her head which never return again the same way but probably go backwards again from the head down the back to the tail and thus so long as she is in local motion they retain their circulation which is a pleasant spectacle And more pleasant if you let her creep upon the lower side of your glass-object-plate and so view that wavy Current of Spirits through the Microscope which handsome experiment does not onely prove the Spirit 's circular motion but also ocularly demonstrates that the Animal Spirits are the Soul 's immediate instrument in all Loco-motion Now if you reply that it is onely the parts of her body that moving by a kind of undulation protrude one another forwards as Palmer-worms which we call Wool-boys and some sort of Caterpillars do To this I answer that do but intensly observe any one of the former spots or clouds and you shall see it go quite along from the tail to the head keeping alwayes an equal distance from the precedent and subsequent spot so that it is far more ingenious to believe it to be a gale of Animal Spirits that moving from her head along her back to her tail and thence along her belly to her head again is the cause of her progressive motion OBSERVAT. XXII Of Lampreys THe Lamprey hath seven holes or cavities on eiside three or four and no gills at all as other fishes have whence the common people through ignorance of these cavities and their proper use in nature have affirmed them to be Eyes an errour so gross and palpable that it needs not the Microscope to refute it For these holes or sluces do indeed supply the defect of gills and are assisted by the conduit in the head for like Cetaceous Animals the Lamprey hath a fistula spout or pipe at the back part of the head whereat they spirt out water so that both these cavities and the head-pipe together do very neatly supply the defect of gills and execute their office of receiving and ejecting water again These sluces and the fistula shoot themselves slopewise and not straight forwards into the cavity of her neck The Heart in this Animal is very strangely secured lies immured or capsulated in a Cartilage or grisly substance which includes the Heart and its Auricle as the Scull or Pericranium does the Brains in other Animals it is of a horny and transparent substance of an obtuse conical figure cemented and glewed as it were on all sides to the Pleura or innermost skin of the Thorax the Cone or obtuse Tip of this Capsula butts or shoots it self into the basis of the Liver which to give way thereunto has an oval cavity or hollowness exactly fit to receive it In this Cartilaginous Pericardium or purse of the heart is likewise the Auricle co-included lying not upon the basis of the heart as in other Animals but laterally adjacent thereunto insomuch that it being far more flaggy then the heart they seem to represent the right and left ventricle of the heart Yet is the Heart not onely more solid but seated in the right side and the Auricle in the left If the Lamprey be laid upon her back and you gently lift up with a probe the Heart and Auricle you shall see a fine thin Membrane arise which separates the Heart from the Auricle as the falx cerebri does separate the left side of the brain from the right From this Auricle proceeds a little short Channel which perforates this separating Membrane and brings the bloud from the auricle into the heart we thrust a probe just under this Channel betwixt the Heart and the Auricle to see the bloud passe from the Auricle into the Heart for at every pulse of the Auricle you might see the bloud passe through this Channel into the heart for alwayes as the bloud passed through it was blew and when empty pale and transparent that I could easily see the Probe thorow it Whilest I had the Probe in this position with another Instrument and it together I quite stopped the Channel on purpose to hinder the bloud from coming into the heart which thereupon grew very pale and in a short time ceased its motion the Auricle in the interim swelled and was very red I no sooner opened the Channel to let the bloud have a free passage as formerly but the heart began afresh to beat again We pricked the heart while it
will melt immediately like Wax if you hold them but near the flame of a common Candle without any blast at all by which Artifice I make small Syphons for the Tryal of many notable Experiments of which I have treated at large in our Mercurial Experiments This further I shall adde of Flint that in it you shall see small Sparks of Diamonds angular and growing out of the Stone as out of a Mineral bed OBSERVAT. L. Of Hair WE slit a black Horse's Hair with a Rasor and perceived it to be hollow with a white streak like pith in the middle of it it seemed as big as a Rush and like a Rush slit length-wayes into two They are none of them Cylindrical but angular and corner'd which you may even perceive by your fingers by twirling a Horse-hair in them Now though Borrelius and some of our Anatomists as Bartholin Riolan c. say the like of the Hairs of a mans head that they also are hollow within and angular and corner'd without yet I could never perceive neither the one nor the other in any of the Microscopes I have seen though I have tried it in four excellent ones the worst whereof I am confident was better then that of Borrels In all which I could perceive nothing of an Hair but that it was like a thin horn something diaphanous especially in the full Sun which diaphanity might perchance hinder the appearance both of its cavity and angularity also for I my self have little glass pipes of so little a Cylinder and so small a bore that their hollowness to the bare eye is utterly imperceptible And since the bristles and quils in other Animals are sensibly hollow which are analogous to the hairs in a man I doubt not but every one of our hairs is hollow also which though our Glasses by reason of their transparency cannot present yet it is palpably evinced by an odde Experiment in Poland where there is a disease they call the Plica which makes the very hairs of their heads drop bloud at the ends and if cut any where to drop bloud there also which infallibly proves the tubulous cavity of them Besides we see the hairs do grain and fork themselves when grown too long which is a sign also of their hollowness What shall we judge them too small to be perforated by Nature since we see she has perforated Vessels within the Body as small as hairs as the Venae Lacteae and Lymphae-ducts nay since we see that Art can blow a glass hollow and yet as small as hair and your Wire-drawers know that if they take a short piece of Wire as thick as a quill and drill it through that then though they draw it out to the smalness of a hair yet wil it still remain hollow quite through in despite of their Wurdle which is as great a Miracle in that Engine as that the like Wire once gilt shall remain perfectly gilt all over though it be drawn five hundred yards longer than it was at first which is an experimental truth and the dayly practice of our Wire-drawers in London So that the conclusion of this Observation may be this that every hair of our head is as a little quill or horn hollow and transparent Which seems to be further avouched also by the burning of hair for there you may perceive the same odour and smell as of burnt horn and the Chymists as I remember draw out of hair a volatile Spirit exactly like that of Harts-horn both which experiments do prove an homogeneity and similarity of their substance OBSERVAT. LI. Of Aromatical Electrical and Magnetical Effluxions SOme with a Magisterial Confidence do rant so high as to tell us that there are Glasses which will represent not onely the Aromatical and Electrical Effluxions of Bodies but even the subtile effluviums of the Load-stone it self whose Exspirations saith Doctor Highmore some by the help of Glasses have seen in the form of a Mist to flow from the Load-stone This Experiment indeed would be an incomparable Eviction of the Corporeity of Magnetical Effluviums and sensibly decide the Controversie 'twixt the Peripatetick and Atomical Philosophers But I am sure he had better Eyes or else better Glasses or both then ever I saw that performed so subtle an Experiment For the best Glasses that ever I saw would not represent to me the evaporations of Camphire which spends it self by continually effluviating its own Component Particles nay I could never see the grosser steams that continually perspire out of our own Bodies which you see will foil and besmear a polished Glass at any time and which are the fuliginous Eructations of that internal fire that constantly burns within us Indeed if our Diopticks could attain to that curiosity as to grind us such Glasses as would present the Effluviums of the Magnet we might hazard at last the discovery of Spiritualities themselves however it would be of incomparable use to our Modern Corpuscularian Philosophers who have banished Qualities out of the list of the Predicaments And truly as the Learned Doctor Brown hath it The Doctrine of Effluxions their penetrating Natures their invisible paths and unsuspected effects are very considerable for besides the Magnetical One of the Earth several Effusions there may be from divers other Bodies which invisibly act their parts at any time and perhaps through any Medium A part of Philosophy but yet in discovery and will I fear prove the last Leaf to be turned over in the Book of Nature Some Considerations Corollaries and Deductions Anatomical Physical and Optical drawn from the former Experiments and Observations FIrst Therefore it is Ocularly manifest from the former Observations that as perfect Animals have an incessant motion of their Heart and Circulation of their Bloud first discovered by the illustrious Doctor Harvey so in these puny automata and exsanguineous pieces of Nature there is the same pulsing Organ and Circulation of their Nutritive Humour also as is demonstrated by OBSERV fourth sixth seventeenth c. Nay by OBSERV sixth it is plain that a Louse is a Sanguineous Animal and hath both an Heart and Auricles the one manifestly preceding the pulse of the other and hath a purple Liquor or Bloud which circulates in her as the Noblest sort of Animals have which though it be onely conspicuous in its greatest bulk at the heart yet certainly it is carried up and down in Circulatory Vessels which Veins and Arteries are so exceeding little that both they and their Liquor are insensible For certainly if we can at a Lamp-Furnace draw out such small Capillary Pipes of Glass that the reddest Liquor in the World shall not be seen in them which I have often tried and done how much more curiously can Nature weave the Vessels of the Body nay and bore them too with such a Drill as the Art of man cannot excogitate Besides we see even in our own Eyes that the Sanguineous Vessels that run along the white of the eye
of mine having pil'd up many Cart-loads of these Brass-lumps in a Barn of his for some secret purposes of his own the Roof letting rain-water fall copiously in amongst them they all began to smoak and at last to take fire and burnt like red hot Coals so that the Town was in an uproar about quenching of them and one thing further I took special notice of in this unlucky Experiment that the Water which drained from the quenching of them left little pieces and Crystals of Copperase sticking all along to the Piles of Grass that grew in the Croft it run down Thus Antimony and Sublimate being mixed together will grow so hot the one relaxing the fermenting spirit in the other that they are not to be touched Thus in the Corrosion of Mettals by Aqua fortis what a strong heat is there in the Liquor and what a steam constantly evaporates during their fermentation In the Commixtion of Oyl of Vitriol with Oyl of Tartar per deliquium what a violent heat and effervescence do presently arise besides a sharp and acrimonious vapour that strikes our nostrils Nay and we see our Subterraneous Damps do sometimes with intermixtion with the moist Air grow to that over-height of fermentation that they fire of themselves and strike down all before them Thus the Spirit of Niter mixed with Butter of Antimony grows so hot that it is ready to rise in a flame Thus certainly do all Baths receive their heat from Mineral Vapours or the Minerals themselves being in solutis Principiis and so the fermenting Spirit sets a playing in them as the Learned Doctor Jordan did most rationally conjecture This universal fermenting Spirit does not onely play these feats in the Mineral but also operates in the same manner in the Vegetable Kingdome which we ocularly behold in the Artifice of Malt where the Grains of Barly being moistned with water the parts are relaxed the internal Spirits in them are dilated and put into action and the superfluity of water being removed which might choak it and the Barly being layd up in heaps the fermentation and heat presently appears with a kind of vinous steam and effluviums which passe from it and therefore it shoots forth into Spires Thus we see in wet-Hay how the spirits work not onely to a heat but if they be not cooled and prevented by Ventilation they break out into a flame also Nay in all Vegetables there is this constant Heat though it be below our Sensation as it is in some Fishes and colder Animals also and a constant steam and transpiration of particles as we have experimentally proved in our XXV Observation And now let us pursue these Spirits into the Animal Kingdom and we shall see that they have the like effects and operations there also as is formerly observed onely being there in greater plenty and more purely refined and in a constant state of Fusion and Volatility they work nobler effects Now the Spirits that are lodged in all the meats and drinks we receive being more or less fixed therein What does the Soul but like an excellent Chymist in this internal Laboratory of Man by a fermentation of our nourishment in the stomach and guts a filtration thereof through the Lacteae a digestion in the Heart a Circulation and Rectification in the Veins and Arteries what does she I say by these several Physico-Chymical operations but strive all this while to unfix exalt and volatilize the Spirits conteined in our nutriment that so they may be transmitted to the Brain and its divarications and in that reconditory kept and reposited for her use and service So that these we now call Animal Spirits are the purest subtlest and most volatile particles and activest Atoms of the bloud which by continual pulsation of the Heart are carried with the bloud by the carotidal Arteries up into the Brain and there by that lax and boggy substance are imbibed and separated from the bloud and thence by the Spinal Marrow and Nerves transmitted to all the parts of the Body Now as the Chyle is perfected in the stomach and guts and their appendent Vessels the lacteal Veins and as the bloud is perfected in the Heart and it s annexed Vessels the Veins and Arteries so the Animal Spirits are separated preserved and perfected in the Brain with its continued trunk and branches viz. the Spinal Marrow Nerves and Fibers for the uses hereafter to be declared Now the two former Liquors the Chyle and the Bloud because of their grosser liquidity need to be conveyed in hollow Pipes and Channels viz. the Veins and Arteries but the Spirits which is the quintessence of them both can easily pass by a swift filtration through the Brain Spinal Marrow and Nerves Membranes and Fibers which are as it were the Cords Sayls and Tackling to move this Engine or Vessel we call the Body Nay though we can give you no sensible eviction of it Why may not all those long filaments of which the substance of the Brain Spinal Marrow and Nerves consists be tubulous and hollow so that the Animal-Spirits may be channelled through them as the bloud through the Veins and Arteries I am sure we see by Observation xxxi and L. what infinitely small filaments and vessels there are in Animals and yet all tubulous and perforated so that the suddain inflation of all those capillary threads or pipes may serve for Motion of the Body and the constant though flower filtration of the Spirits through their Coats and Cylindrical Membranes may serve for Sensation So that it seems this Cottage of Clay with all its Furniture within it was but made in subserviency to the Animal Spirits for the extraction separation and depuration of which the whole Body and all the Organs and Utensils therein are but instrumentally contrived and preparatorily designed Just as the Chymical Elaboratory with all its Furnaces Crucibles Stills Retorts Cucurbits Matrats Bolt-heads Pelicans c. were made for no other end by the ingenious Chymist than for the extraction and depuration of his Spirits and Quintessences which he draws from those Bodies he deals with in the obtainment of which he hath come to the ultimate design of his indeavours Now as in Minerals and Vegetables the colluctancy of these fermenting Spirits with the grosser matter does both create a constant heat and evaporation of Atoms So in Animals the like is more eminently conspicuous to wit the vital heat or calidum innatum and those fuliginous effluviums which pass constantly out of us by insensible transpiration which Sanctorius hath proved to exceed the bulk and weight of all our sensible Evacuations whatsoever Having thus demonstrated how the Soul obtains these Spirits after her several operations of Digestion Chylification Sanguification Circulation c. the like now let us see what use she makes of so pretious a substance First therefore we affirm that this thin and spirituous matter which is called the Animal Spirits is the immediate Instrument of the Soul in
nay and probably into the diaphanous humours also are not discernable but when they are preter-naturally distended in an Ophthalmia and so grow turgent and conspicuous To which we may adde that in most quick Fish though you cut a piece of their flesh off yet will no bloud be discernable though they be sanguineous Animals but the bloud is so divided by the minuteness of their Capillary Vessels or percribration through the habit of the Parts that either it has lost its redness or our eyes are not able to discover its tincture Secondly It is observable also from the former Experiments that in these minute Animals their nutritive Liquor never arises to the perfection of bloud but continually as it were remains Chyle within them for want of a higher heat to dye it into that Spirituous Liquor Nay you shall observe in perfect Sanguineous Animals a Circulation of an albugineous chylie-matter before the bloud have a being if you take Nature at the rise and critically observe her in her rudimental and obscure beginnings For view but an Egge after the second day's Incubation and you shall see the cicatricula in the Yolk dilated to the breadth of a groat or six-pence into transparent concentrical circles in the Centre whereof is a white Spot with small white threads which in futurity proves the Heart with its Veins and arteries but at present both its motion and circulation is undiscernable to the bare eye by reason of the feebleness thereof and also because both the Liquor and its Vessels were concolour to the white of the Eggs they swum in but the Heart does circulate this serous diaphanous Liquor before by a higher heat it be turned into bloud And one thing here I am tempted to annex which is a pretty and beneficial Observation of the Microscope and that is That as soon as ever you can see this red pulsing Particle appear which Doctor Harvey conceited not to be the Heart but one of its Auricles you shall most distinctly see it to be the whole Heart with both Auricles and both Ventricles the one manifestly preceding the pulse of the other which two motions the bare eye judges to be Synchronical and without any interloping perisystole at all So admirable is every Organ of this Machine of ours framed that every part within us is intirely made when the whole Organ seems too little to have any parts at all Thirdly It is peculiarly remarkable from Observation xxxi That not onely the bloud in perfect Animals and the chyle in imperfect ones but also the Animal Spirits have a Circulation which singular observation hath often provoked and entised our endeavours into a further enquiry after the Nature of these Spirits as to their Origin or Generation their activity and motion with some other eminent properties belonging to them we shall draw our thoughts together and so present them to your View I will not say that our discourse hereon shall pass for an un-controllable authentick Truth it is all my ambition if it attain but to the favourable reception of a rational Hypothesis at last A Digression of the Animal Spirits FIrst then we have not those narrow conceptions of these subtle Spirits to think that they are onely included within the Bodies of Animals or generated much less created there but we doe believe that they are universally diffused throughout all Bodies in the World and that Nature at first created this aetherial substance or subtle particles and diffused them throughout the Universe to give fermentation and concretion to Minerals vegetation and maturation to Plants life sense and motion to Animals And indeed to be the main though invisible Agent in all Natures three Kingdoms Mineral Vegetal and Animal And lest they should because of their exceeding volatility and activity be of little or no use Nature hath immersed them in grosser matter and imprisoned them in several Bodies with which she has intermixed them the better to curb the boundless activity of so thin and spirituous a substance and therefore the Spirits of all compound Bodies especially ought to be considered under a triple notion Viz. Under the state of 1. Fixation 2. Fusion 3. Volatilization First of Fixation when they are so complicated with the grosser Particles of Matter and lockt therein so fast that they can hardly be separated and dis-imprisoned as in Minerals but most especially in Gold Secondly The state of Fusion I call that when the Spirits by any kind of help have so wrought themselves towards a Liberty that they are in the middle way to Volatility as in half-concocted Minerals fermenting Vapours or Liquors and half-ripned Fruits c. Thirdly The Spirits are in their third state of Volatility when after a colluctancy with the grosser Particles they have so subjugated and overcome them that they are just upon wings and ready to fly away as in Wine when it is in the height of its fermentation and in some part of our arterial bloud alwayes Now we observe that those Bodies that relax and open the grosser composition of other Bodies do presently create a fermentation for being like so many Keys they set the imprisoned Spirits at Liberty which presently fall on working and by attenuating the grosser parts separating the Heterogeneous volatilizing some precipitating of others digesting of others expelling of others do at last mould it and work it to such a Body as the parts of it are fit to make up In all which interval of time there is a palpable and sensible heat produced Thus this Spirit being embowelled in the Earth and meeting there with convenient matter and adjuvant causes doth proceed to produce Minerals creating an actual heat wheresoever it operates as in Allum or Copperase Mines which being broken exposed and moistned will gather an actual heat and produce much more of those Minerals then else the Mine would yield as Agricola and Thurniseer do affirm and is proved by common experience The like is generally observed in Mines as Agricola Erastus and â—ibanius c. do affirm and avouch out of the dayly experience of Mineral men who affirm that in most places they find their Mines so hot as they can hardly touch them although it is likely that where they work for perfect Minerals the heat which was in fermentation whilst they were yet in breeding is now much abated the Mineral being grown to their perfection as the skilful and excellent Doctor Jordan very well infers The like heat we observe constantly to be in our Cole-Pits Nay we sometimes observe in our Brass-lumps as our Colliers call them which is a kind of Marcasite a very great heat for being exposed to the moist Air or sprinkled with water they will smoak and grow exceeding hot and if they be layd up on a heap and watered they will turn into a glowing red hot fire as I have seen them my self And it was a Casualty once terrible to our Neighbour-Town of Ealand for there one Wilson a Patient