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PART 9

Concerning the spleen, also, we shall therefore have no further doubts1 as to whether it attracts what is proper to it, rejects what is foreign, and has a natural power of altering and retaining all that it attracts; nor shall we be in any doubt as to the liver, veins, arteries, heart, or any other organ. For these four faculties have been shown to be necessary for every part which is to be nourished; this is why we have called these faculties the handmaids of nutrition. For just as human faeces are most pleasing to dogs, so the residual matters from the liver are, some of them, proper to the spleen2, others to the gall-bladder, and others to the kidneys.

1 cf. p. 205.

2 Thus Galen elsewhere caalls the spleen a mere emunctory (ἐκμαγεῖον) of the liver. cf. p. 214, note 1.

On the Natural Faculties. Galen. A.J. Brock. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. 1916.

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