Instead of a verbal answer, therefore, I carried the young man himself to the king, that his majesty might with his own eyes behold this wonderful case : that, in a man alive and well, he might, without detriment to the individual, observe the movement of the heart, and, with his proper hand even touch the ventricles as they contracted. And his most excellent majesty, as well as myself, acknowledged that the heart was without the sense of touch ; for the youth never knew when we touched his heart, except by the sight or the sensation he had through the external integument.
We also particularly observed the movements of the heart, viz. : that in the diastole it was retracted and withdrawn ; whilst in the systole it emerged and protruded ; and the systole of the heart took place at the moment the diastole or pulse in the wrist was perceived ; to conclude, the heart struck the walls of the chest, and became prominent at the time it bounded upwards and underwent contraction on itself.
Neither is this the place for taking up that other controversy; to wit, whether the blood alone serves for the nutrition of the body? Aristotle in several places contends that the blood is the ultimate aliment of the body, and in this view he is sup- ported by the whole body of physicians. But many things of difficult interpretation, and that hang but indifferently together, follow from this opinion of theirs. For when the medical writers speak of the blood in their physiological disquisitions, and teach that the above is its sole use and end, viz. : to supply nourish- ment to the body, they proceed to compose it of four humours, or juices, adducing arguments for such a view from the com- binations of the four primary qualities ; and then they assert that the mass of the blood is made up of the two kinds of bile, the yellow and the black, of pituita, and the blood properly so called. And thus they arrive at their four humours, of which the pituita is held to be cold and moist ; the black bile cold and dry ; the yellow bile hot and dry ; and the blood hot and moist. Further, of each of these several kinds, they maintain that some are nutritious, and compose the whole of the body ; others, again, they say are excrementitious. Still further, they suppose that the blood proper is composed of the nutritious or heterogeneous portions; but the constitution of the mass is such, that the pituita is a cruder matter, which the more powerful
