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BOOK TWO
[p. 149] and that of the bile-duct), or, if not, then we must suppose that there is, as it were, a common space for all three vessels, which becomes filled from the lower vein,
The portal vein.
and empties itself both into the bile-duct and into the branches of the vena cava. Now, there are many
difficulties in both of these explanations, but if I were to state them all, I should find myself inadvertently writing an exposition of the teaching of Erasistratus, instead of carrying out my original undertaking. There is, however, one difficulty common to both these explanations, namely, that the whole of the blood does not become purified. For it ought to fall into the bile-duct as into a kind of sieve, instead of going (running, in fact,
rapidly) past it, into the larger stoma, by virtue of the impulse of anadosis.
Are these, then, the only inevitable difficulties in which the argument of Erasistratus becomes involved through his disinclination to make any use of the attractive faculty, or is it that the difficulty is greatest here, and also so obvious that even a child could not avoid seeing it?
PART 6
And if one looks carefully into the matter one will find that even Erasistratus' reasoning on the subject of nutrition, which he takes up in the second book of his "General Principles," fails to escape this same difficulty. For, having conceded one premise to the principle that matter tends to fill a vacuum, as we previously showed, he was only able to draw a conclusion in the case of the veins and their contained blood.
