Diexodus medica de hepatis

25. This substance is surrounded by the branches of the vessels called the vena cava and the portal vein; nor is the form of the parenchymatis flesh/tissue of an organ defined by any anatomy, but its concretion is such that it merely responds to the compression of the parts situated above and below it.

26. Where it faces the septum referring to the diaphragm, it is convex, smooth, and harder; where it faces the underlying organs, it embraces them with a hollow, soft, and unequal surface that conforms to them; it is thicker in the middle and becomes thin toward the circumference, and it is not divided into lobes.

27. From this, one may conclude that its flesh is posterior in origin to the veins upon which it is spread, and that it congealed after the neighboring parts, having previously been a fluid blood poured out from the branches into its tunic, which was formed there from the peritonæo peritoneum in the manner of a bladder.

28. Was the blood of the mother perhaps carried into the veins of the fetus during our first formation and collected there by singular providence, so that there would be a perpetual generation of the same humor?

29. It required concretion so that the altering power would be more potent. This perhaps occurred when the fetus had to begin to produce its own nourishment. It is larger in the convex part than in the hollow, so that the heat, reflected from the circumference into the workshop of concoction digestion/assimilation as if into a center, might be more intense.

30. The slender and countless veins disseminated through this substance have no blood-making power of their own; they are merely modox modes/channels for the altering humor. They are slender so that concoction might be easier and fuller; they are numerous in number so that the tón tension/tone might be complete; and they consist here of a thinner tunic, lest the faculty of the parenchyma be blunted.

31. And the humor could not have been led to the whole body through a more convenient cavity than in the vessels destined for distribution; and therefore these obtained an implantation in this flesh in a condensed manner, and were digested through it by a numerous branching.