Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/259

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Ancient and Modern Learning.
219

that it is a very strong Muscle; this tho' true was rejected afterwards for want of knowing its true Use; its internal Divisions, its Valves, and larger visible Fibres were well known and distinctly described by the Ancients; only they were mistaken in thinking that there is a Communication between the Ventricles through the Septum, which is now generally known to be an Errour. The Order of the Muscular Fibres of the Heart was not known before Dr. Lower, who discovered them to be Spiral like a Snale-Shell, as if several Skains of Threads of differing Lengths had been wound up into a Bottom of such a Shape, hollow, and divided within. By all these Discoveries Alphonsus Borellus (k)(k) De Motu Animalium, Part II. cap. 5. was enabled to give such a Solution of all the Appearances of the Motion of the Heart, and of the Blood in the Arteries, upon Mathematical and Mechanical Principles, as will give a more satisfactory Account of the wonderful Methods of Nature in dispensing Life and Nourishment to every Part of the Body, than all that had ever been written upon these Subjects before those things were found out.

Below the Midriff are several very noble Viscera: The Stomach, the Liver, the Pancreas or Sweet-Bread, the Spleen, the

Reins,