may see by a hand lifted up the Veins art soon emptied but in the same let down again as soon swoln and full whereas that which is beneath the Heart and returnes by the Way of the hollow Vein ascending is wrought up with much greater Difficulty as being against Nature and only by the forceing on of the Arterial Blood but when the Body lies stretched upon a Level the Blood then is reconveyed from either part alike By which words it plainly enough appears that nothing with a long Neck can ever be put in any great danger of having a Bloodless Head any more than a body set upon a long pair of Legs a witless one indeed some with a short one may especially whilest they argue no better to the purpose about that Subject because if there were need of so strong a Spring to jerk it up to the Head that stood perched upon the long Neck by the very same reason there would no less â—orce be required for the sending it up the lower Limbs of that Body which had the long Legs belonging to it And therefore as some in railery are wont to set the Haires Head against the Goose Giblets so may we upon very good grounds oppose the long Legs to the long Neck because there is the same reason for the one that there is for the other neither greater nor less for as the Blood mounts the Head with Difficulty so it slides down again with ease and on the contrary as it falls into the Feet of it's own accord it must be forced back again to the Heart with so much the greater Labour it will never arrive thither else because conveyed back not at all by the atraction of the Heart but by the forceing on of the Arterial Blood Cum certissimum sit Sanguinis Venosi refluxum non ab attractione Cordis ulla sed a propulsu Arteriosi Sanguinis provenire And then if there be such a necessity for the making the heart more compact for the sake of the long Neck why not as well upon the account of the long Legs in regard the Arteria magna ascendens descendens both receive their Original from the same Stock and consequently stand in need of equal Assistance for the performance of the Offices unto which they have been each of them appointed And as that Party who is to travel a Hill just backward and forward and no more is at an Indifferency as to the whole of the journey he undertakes whether he be to begin at the bottom or the top first So 't is all one whether the Blood when it be to leave the Heart caeteris Paribus fall downwards into the Feet or ascend upwards inro the Head Provided its Passage be looked upon as not compleated till it return to the same part again unless we will say that he who commences his Journey at the bottom of the Hill is constrained to encounter with the greatest hardship of all at the first part of his way which is to be recompensed by a proportionable Alleviation at his coming down again whereas he that takes the contrary Course has only the advantage of the most pleasant part of his Journey at his first seting out and the worst at last which amounts upon a true casting up to just nothing at all 'T is not to be denied but the Blood does pass with a great deal more difficulty from the Heart to the Head than from the same place to the capillary Arteries of the Feet but then if it be considered how steep the ascent from the Feet to the Heart is back again and contrarily how natural the retreat from the Head is to the same Region of the Heart after it has once gained the vertical Point there will be no better way of adjusting the Calculation than by setting one against t'other and then this seemingly learned Discourse wil be resolved into a Parcel of pureself-Contradiction and the great Anatomist convicted to have written he knew not what in the matters appertaining to his own Art I have heard indeed of long billed Brids that would be apt sometimes to bewray their own Nests but never before of any with long Necks that unless they stooped oftentimes would be indanger of the Staggers Besides the Assertion is manifestly untrue in Practice there is no such thing in Nature as that long necked Creatures should be any more obliged to stoop down with their Heads and Necks than others are and those that will but take notice shall observe the Swans to swim along with as erected Necks as either the Teale or the Dab-Chick and if I mistake not to be diving with them as seldom and tho a Horse has a much longer Neck than a Bull I don't see he carries his Head ere a whit the less stately for all that but rather the contrary and if he can but be allowed an able Rider to manage him may be prevailed withal to hold it so from Morning till Night which had the other Posture been altogether so necessary as is pretended would scarcely have been possible besides one would much wonder that the great Horse-Masters who have spent so much of their time and hard study about such niceties should none of them have been Anatomists enough to have understood so much before and that the Grooms and Ostlers who have evermore professed such great kindness to Horses should be such wicked Knaves as to delight in tormenting them thus cruelly when they needed not by causeing their Racks and Mangers to be set at such an unreasonable Height and forceing them to do Penance in a manner for every morsel of Hay they eat And yet the greatest wonder of all is still behind whence it should come to pass that the Horses that are kept at home and have all this Injury done them should look so much fatter and fairer and be so much fitter for Service then those that are turned to grass all the Year about and permitted to feed themselves after their own way with their Heads hanging down and their Blood by that means freely taking that Course which Nature had appointed it But to be serious though they should hold down their Heads longer than others to make the utmost concession Imaginable that could never do neither And unless they were supposed to keep them in that Position for a Constancy there must be some wiser reason sought out for then what is taken from the more easy conveyance of the Blood thither because otherwise their poor Heads would be in a Bloodless Condition however there needs no other Argument to prove the Consequence than what shall be taken from the same Author his own words in another place of the same learned Treatise for if we look forward to the 156. Page and so on we are informed that a Quantity of Blood equal to the whole Mass passes through the Ventricles of every Mans Heart at lest six times in an Hour and how that the same Proportion is likewise to be
particular nature of the thing it self Whether or no it be from the commonness of the Denomination all Drinks being generally looked upon in strict propriety of speech to denote something then the most useful after it comes to be swallowed down or from the prevalency of an Erroneous Custom the doing whereof as it sometimes proves all the warranty it hath so likewise for the most part all the reason it carries along with it Yet so it comes to pass that in case of all Catarrhs and Distillations whether risen from some cold newly taken or an ill habit of body going before or from what other cause origination else imaginable The Pectoral Decoction whenever it comes to be used is with the same hasty speed suffered to make its enterance into the Stomach that all other Drinks commonly are And the poor silly Patients are apt to satisfie themselves very well in what they have done when they so take it and to expect the greatest benefit of all after its admission thither in so much that some persons have been known to take down huge quantities thereof upon that only Score and then to have fancied to themselves some great matter of advantage to have redounded thereby which if hapning to be so as they imagine must needs be no other than the working of their own fancies indeed Because the only possible way to come at the Lungs and so by consequence to do them good is down straight way by the Larynx or Windpipe as has been formerly supposed and therefore whatever Medicament comes once to be transmitted beyond that and is but imagined to have made its approach to the confines of the Oseing cannot otherwise chuse but be past all possibilitie of arriving at the Chest unless any will be so vain as to imagine it to fetch a compass about by the Veins and Arteries and so to visit it in its progress along in Circulation with the Bloud which Opinion as it can never be defended with the least shadow of reason so neither can it be long adhered unto by any sober and considerate man Because in the first place the Stomachs even of the most healthful are constantly affected with an acid kind of Juice which will be sure to impart something of its own quality to whatever Liquor it comes to have any communication or intercourse withall and then after its departure thence into the Venal and Arterial Vessels whereby it becomes united as it were and incorporated into one Body with the Bloud what further degree of change and alteration must it of necessitie be supposed to undergo again So that albeit in its pristine Estate it may and ought to be accounted of as purely Pectoral Yet after all these shiftings changes and variations It would cease to be so any longer as becoming of a quite and clean different nature from what Originally it was And therefore if happening from that time forward to contribute any thing of Relief unto the Patient it can in no wise be allowed to do so under the former Notion of being Pectoral but upon some other accidental account and so any decoction whatever that was not Pectoral might have done every whit as well But farther it being by way of Concession granted though it can never be proved that these first qualities it was at first endured withall have not been all this while impaired but to have remained altogether unchangeable and in the self same condition they were in from the beginning Seeing nothing can be said to operate after any sort whatever where it self is not I would farther demand which way and by what secret instinct it should be directed to its journeys end so as to find out those very parts which stood in need of its assistance because in all likelyhood some competent portion thereof must be subject to be diverted in its course by sweating othersome again be drained away by Urine And then as for the Residue which shall be translated thither It must either pass upon the account of Nutriment or some other Title beside If the former than no other part of the Body whatever but what may lay as fair a claim thereto as the Lungs can be supposed to have because Nature being the same common Mother to them all designs the distribution of her nourishment to every part of the Body alike If the latter It must in probabilty make some reasonable stay there in order to the producing so generous an effect which is another matter extream difficult to conceive of because then it must all on the sudden shake hands with a new Acqaintance in whose company it is supposed to glide along and with whom it had just before as it were contracted a new League of Alliance and which is it self always maintained in a progressive endless motion as being still pushed on a little more forwarder than it was before by every repeated Systole of the Heart Besides after all that can be either said or granted the advantage gained thereby amounts only to thus much to be conveyed so far forth as the extremities or meer out-parts of the Lungs whereas the Grievance calling for Redress lies much more inwardly and occult even within the very Cavitie of the Windpipe it self and the divided subdivided Branches thereof I speak now of Catarrhs Distillations for which these Drinks are frequently misapplyed not but that there are Cases in which the Lights may be affected without any thing at all of a Distillation from above what time Pectoral Medicaments are allowed to be alike proper as they are now but those being but rarely seen in comparison of the others and the very same way of application we have been contending for being most deservedly even in them to be preferred It makes nothing at all against what I have been discoursing about and that as proceeding first of all from the matter of the Catarrh so falling upon them Or Secondly from some noxious qualitie accompanying it in its Descent both which are sure to set the Lungs a coughing The One of them as filling up that space which by Nature it was never ordained for and so consequently not long to be endured there The Other by irritating those Vessels it happens to approach unto by the ungratefulness of its Touch. And neither of these two Inconveniences can possibly be remedied by any thing remote or kept at a distance from them No it must be something nearer hand that is to satisfie such Intentions as these are Something that by joyning it self with the matter of the Catarrh may have an innate aptitude to abate its acrimony take away or prevent that viscide toughness which after a little stay is wont to be contracted there and thereby become a means to help Nature disburthen her self the more easily when a Fit of Coughing shall next succeed and also may be able by some virtues of a countervailing nature immediately to affect the very parts themselves that have been prejudiced thereby and that
Tractatus de Corde stuffed from the Beginning to the end with little else besides Arguments of that kind 't would be an Infinite Labour to enumerate them all I l'e only give Instance in one of the first as a Specimen of those which follow and according to the Estimation taken from thence may the others reasonably be guessed at In Men and such Creatures as receive their Nourishment from Flesh says that renowned Author Itaque homini Carnivoris fere quibusque Animalibus Cordis sedes non in Centro sed in superiore Corporis parte constituta est c. vide Pag. Tractat. de Corde Fol. 2. The Position of the Heart is never found exactly seated in the very Center of the Body but rather somewhat above it to the intent it might dispose of what Blood should be convenient to be sent up to the Head so much the more easily for seeing that the forcing up and Distribution of the Blood depends altogether upon the Contraction of the heart and the Liquid Substance thereof is not of its own Nature so freely carried upwards as to the Parts directly Opposite or which are placed beneath it In case the Scituation of the Heart had been further from the Head it could not have been possible but that that must have been more compactly framed so as to have sent it up thither with a greater Force or else the Head would sometime or other have wanted Blood for its own Support Fieri non posset quin aut ipsum robustius formatum c. must have been just so Bold audacious man as if so be the Almighty could possibly have contrived no other ways for the bringing his own Works to perfection but what were exactly understood by him or that by his dissecting of Hearts and the Observations made thereupon he had arrived to such a Degree of anatomical Experience as to be able to view Knowledge in that particular with the very Searcher of Hearts himself 't is such a proud kind of Expression as one shall seldom or never hear from a Christian man had the thing been never so certain much less in a matter absolutely false and ridiculous as will appear in the further Examination of it as I do not see wherein Menocrates his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though a Heathen and for which he was accounted bereft of his wits can stand chargeable of greater Arrogance But to proceed In Animalibus autem qua longiori Collo quasi ad victum porrecto donantur c. But as for such Creatures as have longer Necks than usual which are the Instruments with which they â—â—â—d their Hearts are as far distant from their Heads as any of the rest of the Parts of their Body besides and that without any thing of Dammage to them at all because for the most part they suck their Food with their Heads hanging downwards so that though the Blood may have farther to pass in them than in some other Creatures yet it is a convenience of a much plainer and far more easy discent Whether this conceit be his own or not is foreign to my enquiry and but the same thing to him neither because if it be not his own he thereby discovers the wretchedness of his Judgement in espousing it as not having wit enough to discern where to pilfer with the greatest safety in collecting matter for his little Treatise if it be the wretchedness of his Fancy for lighting on no better however I for my part have no reason but to suppose it to be his because he is so willing to have it thought so and therefore I shall crave leave to demand of him after what other way and manner he would have either them or any other Creature else to feed themselves some very few only excepted then by hanging down of their heads though not for the simple reason alleadged by him to wit that the Blood might by that means so much the more freely pass into their heads but because their Eyes which were their Instruments of seeing were placed there which surely is somewhat more than his were when he treated upon that Argument he would never else have blundered so egregiously at his first setting out if he had And that may pass very well for one final Cause and another somwhat like to that may be because their Mouthes which are their Instruments of Eating are placed somewhat thereabouts to And there being a necessity for the Nourishment first to be taken in at the Mouth before it can come at the Neck or Stomack to be dispersed up and down the Body for the Sustentation of each Member 'T is pretty clear that all Creatures almost that are debarred from feeding on Flesh will be constrained either to reach it from the Surface of the Earth or fish for it in the Waters because they must seek for it some where or other where it is to be found and then if they cannot bring their Food to their Mouths must be glad to bend their Mouths and their Necks too whether they be long or short down to their Food unless they can be content to be famished to death for want of it Besides the reason thereof can never possibly be that alledged by him here upon other far different Accounts because if he be well Remembered he teaches us else where Pag. 133 or if he had not it would have been no very hard matter to have informed our selves that the motion of the Blood in ' its full latitude depends originally upon the Arteries and is driven by their pulsation even from first to last Cum enim certissimum sit Sanguinis Venosi refluxum non ab attractione Cordis ulla sed a propulsu arteriosi Sanguinis provenire facile est concipere quantum partium quoque situs ad facilit andum aut retardandum hunc motum conferat Veluti enim in homine cum in Pedes erigitur Sanguis a Venis Jugularibus Vena Cava descendente citius facilius suo quasi pondere in Cordis Sinus delabitur simili modo atque Venae in Manu elevata moxvacuae in demissa vero turgidae plenae cernuntur qui vero est in Partibus inferioribus Vena Cava ascendente difficilius contra Naturam suam solum abarterioso Sanguine versus Cor propellitur Vi quadam urgetur in planum autem jacente Corpore Sanguis aeque facile ab utrisque redit For seeing it is most certain that the flowing back of the Venal Blood does not at all depend upon the Artraction of the Heart but rather upon the Succession and coming on of the Arterial blood 't is easy to apprehend how much the situation of the parts conduces either to the facilitating or retarding of that Motion as in case of a Mans standing upright upon his feet the Blood tumbles down with a much freer Course and more natural propensity from the Jugular and hollow Vein descending into the Ventricles of the Heart as we