Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/354

 sarcoses or morbid growths spring around the minute branches of conterminous arteries by which they are nourished, and oc- casionally attain to an excessive size.

Looking back upon this office of the arteries, or the circu- lation of the blood, I have occasionally and against all expec- tation completely cured enormous sarcoceles, by the simple means of dividing or tying the little artery that supplied them, and so preventing all access of nourishment or spirit to the part affected ; by which it came to pass that the tumour, on the verge of mortification, was afterwards easily extirpated with the knife, or the searing iron. One man in particular (and this case I can confirm by the testimony of many respectable persons) had an enormous hernia carnosa, or sarcocosis of the scrotum, larger than a human head, and hanging as low as the knee ; from its upper part a fleshy mass, of the thickness of the wrist, or such a rope as is used on ship-board, extended into the abdomen ; and the evil had attained to such a height, that no one durst attempt the cure, either with the knife or any other means. Nevertheless, by the procedure above in- dicated, I succeeded in completely removing this huge excres- cence which distended the scrotum, and involved the testicle in its middle; this latter organ, with its vas prseparans and vas de- ferens, and other parts which descend in the tunica vaginalis, being left all the while safe and uninjured. But this cure, as well as various others, accomplished in opposition to vulgar opinion and by unusual procedures, I shall relate at greater length in my Medical Observations, if God grant me longer life.

I mention such cases with a view of more clearly showing that the liver grows upon the vessels, and is only developed some time after the appearance of the blood ; that its paren- chyma is derived from the arteries whence the matter is effused, and that for a while it remains white and bloodless, like various other parts of the body. Now in the same manner and order precisely as the chick is developed from the egg, is the genera- tion of man and other animals accomplished.

Whence it appears that the doctrine which makes the liver the author and fashioner of the blood, is altogether groundless, although both formerly and at the present time this view ob- tained universal assent ; this was the reason wherefore the liver was reckoned as among the principal and first-formed organs of