Aristotle ON THE PARTS OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by W. Ogle.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

144 pages - You are on Page 72

The heart again is the only one of the viscera, and indeed the only part of the body, that is unable to tolerate any serious affection. This is but what might reasonably be expected. For, if the primary or dominant part be diseased, there is nothing from which the other parts which depend upon it can derive succour. A proof that the heart is thus unable to tolerate any morbid affection is furnished by the fact that in no sacrificial victim has it ever been seen to be affected with those diseases that are observable in the other viscera. For the kidneys are frequently found to be full of stones, and growths, and small abscesses, as also are the liver, the lung, and more than all the spleen. There are also many other morbid conditions which are seen to occur in these parts, those which are least liable to such being the portion of the lung which is close to the windpipe, and the portion of the liver which lies about the junction with the great blood-vessel. This again admits of a rational explanation. For it is in these parts that the lung and liver are most closely in communion with the heart. On the other hand, when animals die not by sacrifice but from disease, and from affections such as are mentioned above, they are found on dissection to have morbid affections of the heart.

Thus much of the heart, its nature, and the end and cause of its existence in such animals as have it.

Part 5

In due sequence we have next to discuss the blood-vessels, that is to say the great vessel and the aorta. For it is into these two that the blood first passes when it quits the heart; and all the other vessels are but offshoots from them. Now that these vessels exist on account of the blood has already been stated. For every fluid requires a receptacle, and in the case of the blood the vessels are that receptacle. Let us now explain why these vessels are two, and why they spring from one single source, and extend throughout the whole body.

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