Essay on the use of the spleen : with an episode of the spleen's marriage, a physiological love-story / by Patrick Black.

  • Black, Patrick, 1813-1879.
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essay on the use of the spleen : with an episode of the spleen's marriage, a physiological love-story / by Patrick Black. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/46 (page 17)
    sent into such a foul nursery as the Liver, whose primary business is altogether of a cleansing and purifying nature ? Shall Nature say to these bantlings, ' Go and befoul yourselves with bile, and then, when you have had your lark in the mud, come into my service, and discharge your appro- priate functions—the functions I have assigned to you' ? Would she not rather say, ‘ I will take you, my children, fresh from your birth. You shall come at once into my Vena Cava, a channel well fitted to receive you. I will not send you to swim in the dirty streams of Pactolus, rich and valuable though they be. Your presence there would only hinder that great river in his bounteous mission, and impede the functions of that noble organ the Liver, whose business it is to refine his golden sands ’ ? Or let us, with others, regard the Spleen as the ‘ slaughter-house,’ or ‘ grave,’ of the same beings. V/ould it be in this clumsy, roundabout fashion that Nature would discharge her useless, effete matter ? Would she not expel them forthwith, instead of sending them through the Liver, where they could only hamper and obstruct} Or, let us B