Deliramenta catarrhi, or, the incongruities, impossibilities, and absurdities couched under the vulgar opinion of defluxions / The author ... Joh. Bapt. van Helmont, &c. The translator and paraphrast Dr. Charleton.

Jan Baptist van Helmont

Date:: 1650

Credit: Deliramenta catarrhi, or, the incongruities, impossibilities, and absurdities couched under the vulgar opinion of defluxions / The author ... Joh. Bapt. van Helmont, &c. The translator and paraphrast Dr. Charleton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$= ao ie! a ara Rie concerning Defluxions. = = = 8 HD semptions 8c. as d:{perate,and beyond the art of B/culapim. Well a day, as if chey could cure an slcerous inveterate Gane cer, or quiet Fiftela of the Anus, or eyes, at pleafure ! Which Error | chus encounter. 4] en : __ 45-Inche-Aer there perpetually faile up and down whole Clouds of duft atomized; and therefore, by acontinuall | neceflity , together wich our breath we fuck in whole - fwarms of thefe dufty atomes’: and by confequence, the _ 3 whole cavity of the Cheft would .in a very fhort time be - filled with dirt, it nature had not provided us'of lungs, in whofe narrow Meanders,and almoft impervious porofities, thefe Acomes of Duft might be ftopt and-hindered.from fuc- cher advance. And in this relation,the Lungs have no other way of difcharging their excrements , but by Exjcresstion ; chat cheduft drawn in together with the Aer, might be ~ pumpt out of the Pipes of the Lungs, at the fame inftant the ordinary excrements of the cheft are avoyded. Aue, indeed, which hath hicherto layne obfcure and neglected by - the Schools; who have unanimoufly denied che Lungs to be pervious. _ The haire, indeed, wherewith the noftrils are fringed, like a net, catcheth all the {mall fibres or threds of Atomes flying in the aer, and hinders their further ingrefle: and the numerous folds, and annulary Cartilages of che _Afpera Arteria, are like fo many labyrinths to arreft and fix the finer duft, thacic finke not co the boccome of the Lungs. In order to our proofe, That the Lungs areimmove. A able, we havea very fuflictene argument fromthe foremen- tioned ufe of them: and not onely chat, bue further allo, that the fubftance of the Lungs is uncapable of Expanfton — and Conftriffion. And therefore the Lungs of Birds(terving € to the. fame common uf of refpiration ,: as well in them, as us) in regard they are, by many vilible fibres,clofely annexed -and chained to the ribs, cannoe by fucceffive or reciprocall Dilatation and Conftridion,make upthecomparifonofapair of bellows. Again, che whole fabrick ofthéLungsconfi- D_ - fteth of three large veffels,or tubes,equally difperfed through the whole (viz. the Arterial Vein, che Venall Artery, and aS aes G 2 laa Ajpers ee Ss mS ee$