humour, called melancholy, which is transmitted thereto
from the milt, giveth warning to shut in the food.
The tongue doth make the first essay, and tastes
it; the teeth do chew it, and the stomach doth receive,
digest, and chylify it. The mesaraic veins suck
out of it what is good and fit, leaving behind the
excrements, which are, through special conduits for
that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty.
Thereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being
changed again, it by the virtue of that new transmutation
becomes blood. What joy, conjecture you, will
then be found amongst those officers when they see
this rivulet of gold, which is their sole restorative?
No greater is the joy of alchemists, when after long
travail, toil, and expense they see in their furnaces
the transmutation. Then is it that every member
doth prepare itself, and strive anew to purify and
to refine this treasure. The kidneys through
the emulgent veins draw that aquosity from thence which
you call urine, and there send it away through the
ureters to be slipped downwards; where, in a lower
receptacle, and proper for it, to wit, the bladder,
it is kept, and stayeth there until an opportunity
to void it out in his due time. The spleen draweth
from the blood its terrestrial part, viz., the
grounds, lees, or thick substance settled in the bottom
thereof, which you term melancholy. The bottle
of the gall subtracts from thence all the superfluous
choler; whence it is brought to another shop or work-house
to be yet better purified and fined, that is, the
heart, which by its agitation of diastolic and systolic
motions so neatly subtilizeth and inflames it, that
in the right side ventricle it is brought to perfection,
and through the veins is sent to all the members.
Each parcel of the body draws it then unto itself,
and after its own fashion is cherished and alimented
by it. Feet, hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears,
back, breast, yea, all; and then it is, that who before
were lenders, now become debtors. The heart
doth in its left side ventricle so thinnify the blood,
that it thereby obtains the name of spiritual; which
being sent through the arteries to all the members
of the body, serveth to warm and winnow the other
blood which runneth through the veins. The lights
never cease with its lappets and bellows to cool and
refresh it, in acknowledgment of which good the heart,
through the arterial vein, imparts unto it the choicest
of its blood. At last it is made so fine and
subtle within the rete mirabile, that thereafter those
animal spirits are framed and composed of it, by means
whereof the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution,
deliberation, ratiocination, and memory have their
rise, actings, and operations.