Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/48

 566 THE ACETABULA.

��Of the Acetabula.

Fabricius 1 has ascertained nothing on the subject of the "cotyledons" or "acetabula;" he gives only the various opi- nions of the ancients. In the former part of my work, how- ever, in the history of the foetus in the deer, I have mentioned the animals in which acetabula are found ; at the same time I described them as constituting numerous cells of a small size scattered throughout the carunculse, or " fleshy substance," and filled with an albuminous or mucilaginous fluid, like a honey- comb full of honey.

In the deer they greatly resemble in shape the cavity of the haunch-bone which receives the head of the thigh ; hence their name in Greek, KorvX^ovsq (little measures) ; and in Latin, acetabula, because they resemble the little cups formerly brought to table filled with vinegar for sauce.

These cavities do not exceed in size the holes in a large sponge, and a delicate ramification of the umbilical vessels pe- netrates deeply into each of them ; for in them aliment is laid up for the foetus, not indeed constituted of blood, as Fabricius would have it, but matter of a mucous character, and greatly re- sembling the thicker part of the albumen in the egg. Hence it is clear, as I have before observed, that the foetus in cloven- footed animals (as indeed in all others) is not nourished by the blood of the mother.

Aristotle's 2 statement, " that the acetabula gradually dimi- nish with the growth of the foetus, and at last disappear," is not borne out by experiment ; for as the foetus increases so do the carunculae ; the acetabula at the same time become more capacious and numerous, and more full of the albuminous matter.

If the carunculse are pressed no blood escapes, but just as water or honey can be squeezed from a sponge or honey- comb, so if pressure is made a whitish fluid oozes from out of the acetabula, which then become shrunk, white, and flaccid, and at last come to resemble a nipple, or a large flabby wart.

1 Cap iv. - Hist. Anim. lib. vii, cap. 8.

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