De venis mesaraicis obstructis ipsarumque ita affectarum curatione Theses sive Pronunciata LX

useless. Therefore, let the former be called by us a strong obstruction, and the latter a light one.

XI.
Physicians remember this obstruction of the mesaraic veins only when they explain in passing, in various treatises on the Liver, Lientery, ulcers, and long-term fever, that nourishment is denied to the liver, that dropsy and atrophy are induced, and that cold cachexia, deadly fevers, hardness of the liver, dryness, and abscesses are created from obstructed mesaraic veins. However, we initiate a particular study of this subject here.

XII.
Galen established that mesaraic obstruction is a symptom of the liver (5 On Affected Parts). And therefore he orders medicines to be applied to the liver externally, not to the mesaraic veins, so that we do not imitate the folly of those physicians who, when treating those paralyzed in their legs because of some spinal affection in the loin, apply medicines to the legs while neglecting the spine. But yet, a little earlier, he often said that the liver languishes because of mesaraic obstruction; he added, moreover, this reason: for the veins in the mesentery are, as it were, hands for the liver, and they carry up the nourishment from the stomach to it. With these words (if I may judge correctly about such a great Author) he seems not so much to suggest there is no mesaraic obstruction, as to make it twofold. One, a proper one, when the chylous juice does not pass to the liver because the distribution is hindered on account of blocked paths; the other, symptomatic, when the same juice, reaching the already obstructed liver, is not received by it, but regurgitates by ἀνάδοσιν upward distribution/regurgitation into these small veins, as if into certain little fountains.

XIII.
Some infer from the fact that the mesaraic veins are as thin and small as hairs that this distribution of food to the liver is known by imagination rather than by sense. But, when it is established that they can be dilated (for they are bodies composed of membranes, and they stand open with wide orifices, with which they suck up juice like the little suckers of leeches), there can be no doubt about it. Indeed, they do this more quickly and easily the more the circumference of the orifice and the rest of the duct lies open, and the humor is more suited for passage.