Aristotle THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

128 pages - You are on Page 91

Part 19

And now to proceed to the consideration of the blood. In sanguineous animals blood is the most universal and the most indispensable part; and it is not an acquired or adventitious part, but it is a consubstantial part of all animals that are not corrupt or moribund. All blood is contained in a vascular system, to wit, the veins, and is found nowhere else, excepting in the heart. Blood is not sensitive to touch in any animal, any more than the excretions of the stomach; and the case is similar with the brain and the marrow. When flesh is lacerated, blood exudes, if the animal be alive and unless the flesh be gangrened. Blood in a healthy condition is naturally sweet to the taste, and red in colour, blood that deteriorates from natural decay or from disease more or less black. Blood at its best, before it undergoes deterioration from either natural decay or from disease, is neither very thick nor very thin. In the living animal it is always liquid and warm, but, on issuing from the body, it coagulates in all cases except in the case of the deer, the roe, and the like animals; for, as a general rule, blood coagulates unless the fibres be extracted. Bull's blood is the quickest to coagulate.

Animals that are internally and externally viviparous are more abundantly supplied with blood than the sanguineous ovipara. Animals that are in good condition, either from natural causes or from their health having been attended to, have the blood neither too abundant-as creatures just after drinking have the liquid inside them in abundance-nor again very scanty, as is the case with animals when exceedingly fat. For animals in this condition have pure blood, but very little of it, and the fatter an animal gets the less becomes its supply of blood; for whatsoever is fat is destitute of blood.

A fat substance is incorruptible, but blood and all things containing it corrupt rapidly, and this property characterizes especially all parts connected with the bones. Blood is finest and purest in man; and thickest and blackest in the bull and the ass, of all vivipara. In the lower and the higher parts of the body blood is thicker and blacker than in the central parts.

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