Decisiones praecipuorum aliquot aporēmatōn iatrophilosophikōn

of the splenic branch of the portal vein, which extends through the mesentery around the colon and the rectum, and terminates in the muscles of the anus and the interior intestine, as Galen believes (3 Aphorisms 30, and book On Black Bile ch. 4, and book 3 Epidemics, sect. 3, fen 37): but whatever is "diseased" is exonerated without harm through those three veins rising from the vena cava with their arteries, from the two iliacs and the small branch of the vein called "sacral" by Sylvius, and terminating in the rectum, though a little further toward the skin: as Hippocrates rightly feels (initiation of the book On Hemorrhoids, and 3 Epidemics, sect. 6).

Therefore, the flow of menses after conception does not always indicate an abortion.

With the liver laboring, a healthy crisis can also occur "counter-violently" (antipathetically), with the right nostril ejecting blood; as also with the liver affected, the left. For evacuation, as well as revulsion and derivation "by force" or "by observation," is situated not in the straightness of the fibers, nor in the coupling and proximity of the parts, but only in the continuation of the vessels and the straightness of the duct. To which experience itself also consents: which refutes Galen, who in book 1 On Humors (comm. 14) and book 3 On Crises (last ch.), but especially in the book On the Method of Curing by Bloodletting (ch. 15 and 16), has entangled this path—which is in itself most direct—as if it were not consistent with the principle "by the shortest way," in so many brambles and labyrinths that it seems there is a need for Ariadne's thread. With which machines we also demolish the fortifications of those who say that in headache caused by blood, it settles in the forehead; from phlegm in the occiput; from bile in the right side; from melancholy in the left: since pain more frequently infests the synciput because of the thin and fistulous cranium, and the great concurrence of veins and arteries. Although from the uterus after the retention of menses, or the corruption of the seed, and the disturbance of the humors there, pain might be perceived more in the occiput, because of the consensus of the uterus with the brain through the spinal marrow, to which it is connected by robust ligaments.