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

and small. But, since it is established that they can be dilated (for they are membranes, bodies, 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. Verily, they do this more quickly and easily to the extent that the circumference of the orifice and the remaining duct lies open, and the humor exists as more apt for the passage.

XIV.

Galen (4 On the Use of Parts) excellently confirms what we posit. He says the liver is fed by golden blood, and thick blood, because of the thinness of the tunic of the veins in it, and the size of the attachments. For they are interwoven with the mesentery as a base, and end raised up like a sailor’s ladder. And in this way, in individual coils composed in the likeness of leeches, they gape with open mouths when fasting, sucking out whatever juice they find, and preparing it within themselves. Therefore, Galen, in the aforementioned book On the Use of Parts, not ineptly calls them, for the sake of their greed, like the hands of some Epicurean reaching out for everything.

XV.

Whence also thick and viscous humors are sometimes introduced into these, by which, if they stop, either in the orifices themselves or in the remaining ducts, they are blocked. For if an egg soaked in vinegar becomes so ductile that it passes through a very narrow ring, what should be doubted about thicker humors, when it can even be proven by certain examples that solid bodies have passed through these vessels? Namely, in that virgin who, after 10 months, passed through her urine a needle she had swallowed, if one is to believe certain proven writers asserting that this is most true.

XVI.

From these things, I think it is clear that even thicker matter can enter the mesaraic veins, and then, both on account of the tenacious and thick matter, and because of the narrowness of the veins, it is often obstructed, and the paths are shut off; whence it is necessary that distribution is harmed, and the more so the greater the obstruction is. For sometimes obstruction becomes universal when all the veins are blocked; but if it happens that only some are obstructed, it is called a partial obstruction.