Decisiones praecipuorum aliquot aporēmatōn iatrophilosophikōn

...consultation of Galen, by which he asserts that blood transudes from the right sinus of the heart into the left through the fleshy interstitium (Book 3, On the Natural Faculties, ch. 15), is far removed from the truth. For that diaphragma diaphragm is clearly convex on the right side, not hollow, and exceeds the sides of the left ventricle in density. What of the fact that we see, when the thorax of a living animal is opened so that air enters the thoracic cavity, the lungs move nonetheless, making espnoōn kai ekpnoōn inhalations and exhalations? Moreover, the tension and relaxation of respiration occurs not from the thorax by animal motion, kath' hormōn ē proairesin by impulse or choice with the intercostal and epigastric muscles, dilating and constricting (whatever Galen, Book 2 On the Motion of Muscles and 4 On Affected Places, ch. 7, and Averroes, Book 2 Collectanea, ch. 19, might say), but according to the diversity of the matter that effervesces in the heart, from which comes ekphusēsis exhalation, and of the heat extending into the vessels: upon the settling of which, expiration follows, because neither does change happen in an instant, nor is there a continuous generation of those things that come into being all at once (8 Physics, text 23; 6 Physics, text 55 & 87; 1 On the Heavens, text 21). Which we also see occurring in sleepers.
Therefore, the principle of respiration is not from the thorax.

C O R O L L A R Y.

Menstrual blood is by no means virulent, although Caelius Rhodiginus (Book 3, Antiquarum Lectionum, ch. 28), Gaius Julius Solinus (Polyhistor, ch. 4, from Democritus), Pliny (Book 28, ch. 7), and Theophrastus Paracelsus (Book 3, On the Preservation of Natural Things) tell many monstrous tales about this. For it is a cruder humor which, when it cannot assimilate the parts to be nourished, Nature separates through the neck of the uterus (for here some offshoots of the vena cava, where it is divided into two significant trunks above the iliac bone at the fourth lumbar vertebra, are brought in) rather than through the acetabula i.e., the cup-like sockets of the hip or attachment points, so that we might name them thus with Hippocrates and Galen (5 Aphorisms, 45), according to the opinion of Praxagoras, even if they are hardly worthy of this name in man, since in certain animals only, at the beginning of impregnation, forms are found similar to blind hemorrhoids and the herb kumbalis cymbal-shaped plant, yellowish and very similar to a halved pea, as from Aristotle (Book 3, History of Animals, ch. 1, and Book ... On the Generation of Animals, ch. 5) and Galen (Book ...).