Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 002.djvu/93

 the wound being closed, and the Dog let go, he went into all the corners of the Room searching for meat, and having found some bones, he fell a gnawing of them with a strange avidity, as if this Liquor had caused in him a great appetite.

4. Another Dog, into whose veins some Oyl of Tartar was injected, did not escape so well: For he complained much, and was altogether swoln, and then died. Being opened, the Spectators were surprised to find his bloud not curdled, but on the contrary more thin and florid than ordinary; which seems to hint, that a too great fluidity of the bloud, as well as its Coagulation, may cause death.

1. He pretends to have discovered, that the Exterior and softer part of the Brain, doth not cover only the Corpus callosum, as hath been believed hitherto, but is also inserted into it in many places. He hath also observed, That the Corpus callosum is nothing but a Contexture of small Fibres, issuing from the Medulla Spinalis, and terminating in the said Exterior part of the Brain. And these Fibres, he saith, are so manifest in the Ventricles of Fishes brains, that when they are looked through they represent the figure of an Ivory Comb,

2. The Use, which he ascribes to the Brain, is much different, he saith, from what hath been assigned to it hitherto. He pretends, that as half, or at least, a third of the bloud of an Animal is conveighed into the Brain, where yet it cannot be consumed, the finest Serum of this bloud is filtrated through the exteriour part, and then entring into the Fibres of the brain, is thence conveighed into the Nerves: which he affirms to be the reason, that the Head is so often found full of water, when the Brain hath received a wound, or an alteration by some distemper.

3. He hath taken a particular care of examining the Optique Nerve in divers Animals, it being one of the most admirable productions in the Brain. Having therefore among other Fishes dissected the head of a Xiphias or Sword fish, who hath a very big eye, he hath not observed any considerable cavity in the Optique Nerve, nor any Nervous Fibres; but found, that the middle of this Nerve is nothing else, but a large Membrane folded according to its length in many doubles almost like a Fan and invested by the Dura Mater. Eustachio a famous Anatomist, had written something of this before, but obscurely, and without mentioning the Animal, wherein he had made this observation. Rh