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BOOK THREE
PART 13
[p. 291]conduct food and drink into this organ, but in the condition of nausea it performs the neck of the bladder which is beside the liver, albeit single, both fills and empties the bladder. Similarly the canal of the uterus affords an entrance to the semen and an exit to the foetus.
But in this latter case, again, whilst the eliminative faculty is evident, the attractive faculty is not so obvious to most people. It is, however, the cervix which Hippocrates blames for inertia of the uterus when he says:- "Its orifice has no power of attracting semen."
cf. p. 95.
Erasistratus, however, and Asclepiades reached such heights of wisdom that they deprived not merely the stomach and the womb of this faculty but also the bladder by the liver, and the kidneys as well. I have, however, pointed out in the first book that it is impossible to assign any other cause for the secretion of urine or bile.
I. xiii. ; II. ii.
Now, when we find that the uterus, the stomach and the bladder by the liver carry out attraction and expulsion through one and the same duct, we need no longer feel surprised that Nature should also frequently discharge waste-substances into the stomach through the veins. Still less need we be astonished if a certain
amount of the food should, during long fasts, be drawn back from the liver into the stomach through the same veins
Galen's idea is that if reversal of the direction of flow can occur in the primae viae(in vomiting), it may also be expected to occur in the secundae viae or absorptive channels.
by which it was yielded up to the liver during absorption of nutriment.
For this "delivery," "up-yield," or anadosis, v. p. 13, note 5.
