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On the Nature of Man
Nemesius of Emesa, tr. Wither, 1636
I. Of the nourishing power of the soul, and the foure faculties thereof.
ALL the naturall faculties of the nourishing power, are these foure; an attractive appetite, a retentive power, a distributing, and an expulsive (or avoiding facultie: for every part of the living-creature, doth naturally draw unto it selfe such nourishment, as is convenient for the same: when it is attracted, it preserveth it: when the same is kept a due time, it changeth the same into it selfe; and then expelleth whatsoever proveth to be superfluous.
These are the faculties which order the nourishment of the parts of the body; and by these it groweth to an augmentation both in breadth and height.
The wayes or passages,IIby which all superfluities bee avoided, are, by the belly, by urine, by vomits, by sweats, by the mouth, by the nostrils, by the eares, by the eyes, by breathings out, and by invisible pores, and unknowne passages.
All the first evacuations are manifestly preceived, as that excrement called the eare-waxe, by the eares; the teares and the gumme (which wee call the spethyme) by the eyes; and that moisture also which maketh bleare-eyed: the out-breathings likewise, by which a sowltry heat is evaporated from the heart. But by those which we call unknowne passages, there breathes out (insensibly) a moisture over all the body, wherewith many humours are evacuated, from the very depth and drawing together of the arteries; and they are conveyed through the skin where it is rarified.
IIIThe instruments of the nourishing faculty, are the mouth, the stomach, the belly, the liver, all the veines, the intrailes, both sorts of choller, and the reines.
The mouth prepares the food before-hand for the belly, dividing it into small parts, by the teeth and tongue: for in chewing the tongue is very helpfull in gathering the meat together, and in applying it unto the teeth; and as the women which grinde corne, thrust the graines unto the milstone with their hands; so the tongue is as it were a hand to assist in the chewing of our meat.
The food being thus wrought before-hand, is conveyed into the belly by the stomach; which is a place not onely ordained to feele what wee want, but to bee a passage-way also, to convey the meat unto our bellies: for the stomach riseth up when wee eat or drinke, and (drawing unto it that which we swallow down) sendeth it into the belly.
When the belly hath received the same; it severs that which is profitable for nourishment, from that which is woody, stony, or unfit for nutriment. That which is good, is there changed into humours; which are thence caried up to the liver by veines ordained for that purpose, and which are as it were certaine rivulets to convey it thither.
These veines are in the liver, in the maner of rootes, drawing thither from the belly, the juyce of our food, even as the roots of plants draw nourishment from the earth: And the belly may bee resembled unto the earth, which ministreth nourishment unto the plants: The veines like rootes, cary the humour from the belly, from the intrailes, and from the great doubleskin, which fastneth our bowels, unto the back, unto the gates and to the bunches of the liver.
The liver it selfe may be compared unto the stemme or body of the plant. The veines which issue by divers wayes from the hollow veine, springing from the flatt parts of the liver; are like springs, and boughts. After the liver hath received the humour from the belly, it both concocts it, and makes it also like unto it selfe: for the liver consisting of such flesh as hath a neare allyance unto blood, easily converts that humour into blood.
This blood is cleansed by the spleen, by that bladder which receives the gall; and by the reines: for the spleene attracts unto it all the dregs of the blood, and is nourished thereby. The bladder (called the gall) which receives the choller, drawes unto it selfe, the sharpnesse which remained in the juyce of our food. The reines, doe as it were straine out that thin humour which is like whey, and the sharpnesse also which remaineth in that humour: After all which, the blood becomming pure and good, is distributed for a nourishment unto all other parts of the body, by such veines as are dispersed abroad into every mēber.
By this meanes every part of the body drawing blood unto it, retaineth and converteth so much thereof as is proportionable, into it own substance; the rest it sendeth to the next part, and so to the next, that it may yeeld nourishment unto them.
Thus, all the body is in every part nourished, and hath growth and continuance by the blood, which is distributed from the liver: And this part is termed irrationall, and said not to bee obedient unto reason; because that which it performeth, is not executed according to our choice (or as we our selves will) but naturally; and according to it owne nature.