Seite - 1008 - in The Complete Aristotle

extends right through the chamber, coming out as blood-vessel again; just as though the cavity of the heart were a part of the vessel, in which the blood broadens its channel as a river that widens out in a lake. The aorta is attached to the middle chamber; only, by the way, it is connected with it by much narrower pipe. The great blood-vessel then passes through the heart (and runs from the heart into the aorta). The great vessel looks as though made of membrane or skin, while the aorta is narrower than it, and is very sinewy; and as it stretches away to the head and to the lower parts it becomes exceedingly narrow and sinewy. First of all, then, upwards from the heart there stretches a part of the great blood-vessel towards the lung and the attachment of the aorta, a part consisting of a large undivided vessel. But there split off from it two parts; one towards the lung and the other towards the backbone and the last vertebra of the neck. The vessel, then, that extends to the lung, as the lung itself is duplicate, divides at first into two; and then extends along by every pipe and every perforation, greater along the greater ones, lesser along the less, so continuously that it is impossible to discern a single part wherein there is not perforation and vein; for the extremities are indistinguishable from their minuteness, and in point of fact the whole lung appears to be filled with blood. The branches of the blood-vessels lie above the tubes that extend from the windpipe. And that vessel which extends to the vertebra of the neck and the backbone, stretches back again along the backbone; as Homer represents in the lines:— < div class=“quote”> (Antilochus, as Thoon turned him round), Transpierc’d his back with a dishonest wound; The hollow vein that to the neck extends, Along the chine, the eager javelin rends. From this vessel there extend small blood-vessels at each rib and each vertebra; and at the vertebra above the kidneys the vessel bifurcates. And in the above way the parts branch off from the great blood-vessel. But up above all these, from that part which is connected with the heart, the entire vein branches off in two directions. For its branches extend to the sides and to the collarbones, and then pass on, in men through the armpits to the 1008