Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/274

 the office of the diaphragm, which, indeed, of itself, and without the assistance of the abdominal muscles, were incompetent to act as an instrument of respiration. And, then, the diaphragm has another duty to perform in those creatures in whom it is muscular or fleshy, viz., to depress the stomach filled with food, and the intestines distended with flatus, so that the heart and lungs shall not be invaded, and life itself oppressed in its citadel. But as there was no danger of anything of this kind in birds, they have a membranous septum, perfectly well adapted to the purposes of respiration, so that they have very properly been said to have a diaphragm. And were birds even entirely without anything in the shape of a diaphragm, still would Aristotle not be liable to criticism for speaking of the ova commencing at the septum transversum, because by this title he merely indicates the place where the diaphragm is usually met with in other animals. In the same way we ourselves say that the ovary is situated at the origin of the spermatic vasa præparantia, although the hen has, in fact, no such

The perforations of the lungs discovered by me (and to which I merely direct attention in this place,) are neither obscure nor doubtful, but, in birds especially, sufficiently conspicuous, so that in the ostrich I found many conduits which readily admitted the points of my fingers. In the turkey, fowl, and, indeed, almost all birds, you will find that a probe passed downwards by the trachea makes its way out of the lungs, and is discovered lying naked and exposed in one or another of the abdominal cells. Air blown into the lungs of these creatures with a pair of bellows passes on with a certain force even into the most inferior of these cells.

We may even be permitted to ask, whether in man, whilst he lives, there is not a passage from openings of the same kind into the cavity of the thorax? For how else should the pus poured out in empyema and the blood extravasated in pleurisy make its escape? In penetrating wounds of the chest, the lungs themselves being uninjured, air often escapes by the wound; or liquids thrown into the cavity of the thorax, are discharged with the expectoration. But our views of this subject will be found fully expressed elsewhere, viz., in our disquisitions on the Causes, Uses, and Organs of Respiration.