Volume 1

The brain : considered anatomically, physiologically and philosophically / by Emanuel Swedenborg ; edited, translated and annotated by R.L. Tafel.

  • Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688-1772.
Date:
1882-1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The brain : considered anatomically, physiologically and philosophically / by Emanuel Swedenborg ; edited, translated and annotated by R.L. Tafel. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    SAvallow through the venous or pulmonary artery, and convey along the bronchial passages to their intimate chambers and secret cells ; and on the way they divide the disorderly mass by continual acts oi severation, in their branches, capillaries, and tufts, and ultnnately down to its unities, which they lustrate or purify singly or particularly in their little reticulations. After this, whatever is sanguineous, or kindred thereto and consanguineous, they transmit into continuous veins: but whatever is discordant and heterogeneous, whatever is^ merely a dead weight and a useless burden, hostile to the marriage of the chyle with the spirit, and windy or flatulent, they expunge and banish out of the bronchial and vesicular lobules into the cells of the interstices, and there work and knead by reciprocal powers of con- striction, and express its liquid from its thicker parts. But the lungs do not throw out the whole of this impure humour, for the vems select and reabsorb the part available for the blood; the lymphatics imbibe the spirituous part when sublimed to the surface, while the cellular tissue carries off the spume that is left, and extrudes it through foramina, leading uninterruptedly from the vesicles to the larynx, into the bronchia and trachea. Thus the lungs clear away the dross and impurities of the blood, and purify and correct the undigested contents of the heart, divided, according to nature's wonted manner, into their individual parts; at the same time that they eructate and banish the air, the mortal enemy of the blood, in the form of effete and vapid halitus and vapours. In this manner they are the prime and general strainers or Colatories of the blood, and the Evapora- tories of its sweats. The foregoing statements are corroborated by the concurrent testimony of many circumstances; as, 1. The reticula- tions of blood-vessels in the intimate recesses of the lungs, and in the external parts of the pulmonary bladders of those animals which have • no proper lungs. 2. The uninterrupted interstices and cellular tissue surrounding the arteries, veins, and air-tubes, and continuous and permeable on the one hand all the way to the trachea, on the other hand all the way to the surface. 3. The numerous lymphatics and veins opening with their little mouths in these hollow recesses. ^ 4. The multitudinous foramina pervious and open from this tissue into the bronchial ramifications, the bronchia, and the trachea. 5. The experimental evidence furnished by the inflation of air into the bron- chial vessels, and by the injection of coloured fluids into the arteries. 6. The quantity of viscid humour occupying the follicular spaces of the lungs, and causing various morbid affections. 7. The viscid humour of a similar kind covering the bronchise of fishes, in which an analog- ous process of percolation is carried on. 8. The foetor that strikes the olfactory papillae in the expirations, being not completely sheathed or