Kitap 18
10
Afterwards when I recalled this criticism of the physician, I thought that it was shameful, not only for a physician, but for all cultivated and liberally educated men, not to know even such facts pertaining to the knowledge of our bodies as are not deep and recondite, but which nature, for the purpose of maintaining our health, has allowed to be evident and obvious. Therefore I devoted such spare time as I had to dipping into those books on the art of medicine which I thought were suited to instruct me, and from them I seem to have learned, not only many other things which have to do with human experience, but also concerning veins and arteries what I may express as follows: A vein is a receptacle, or a)ggei=on, as the physicians call it, for blood mingled and combined with vital breath, in which the blood predominates and the breath is less. An artery is a receptacle for the vital breath mingled and combined with blood, in which there is more breath and less blood. Sfugmo/s (pulsation) is the natural and involuntary expansion and contraction in the heart and in the artery. But the ancient Greek physicians defined it thus: An involuntary dilation or contraction of the pulse and of the heart.
11
Words from the poems of Furius of Antium which were ignorantly criticised by Caesellius Vindex; a quotation of the very verses which include the words in question.
