Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/357

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ON GENERATION.
257

generation and earliest attracts attention is also the first that fails and disappears.

EXERCISE THE TWENTY-FIRST.

The inspection after the tenth day.

All that presents itself on the tenth day is so accurately de- scribed by Aristotle that scarcely anything remains for us to add. Now his opinion, according to my interpretation of it, is this, viz., that "on the tenth daythe entire chick is conspicuous," 1 being pellucid and white in every part except the eyes and the venous ramifications. " The head at this time is larger than the whole of the rest of the body; and eyes larger than the head are connected with it," (adhering, and being in some sort ap- pended to the head,) " but having as yet no pupils," (perfectly formed pupils must here be understood, for it is not difficult to make out the distinct tunics of the eye at this epoch;) "the eyes, if removed at this time, will be found as large as beans and black, and if they be incised, a clear humour flows out, cold, and re- fracting the light powerfully, but nothing else," i. e., in the whole head there is nothing but the limpid water which has been mentioned. Such is the state of matters from the seventh to the tenth day, as we have said above. "At the same time," he continues, "the viscera also appear, and all that appertains to the abdomen and intestines," viz., the substance of the heart, the lungs, liver, &c., all of a white colour, mucilaginous, pulpy, without any kind of consistency. " The veins, too, that issue from the heart are already in connexion with the umbilicus, from which one vein extends to the membrane that includes the vitellus, which has now become more liquid and diffluent than it was originally ; another to the membrane which sur- rounds everything," (i. e., the tunica colliquamenti,) " and em- braces the foetus, the vitellus and the interjacent fluid. For the embryo increasing somewhat, one portion of the vitellus is

Hist. Anirn. lib. vi, cap. 3.

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