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Show INTRODUCTION TO PART II. THE blood-vessels of the human body have been frequently and accurately described by authors. The anatomists who have described parts of the absorbent system are also neither few nor obscure; but the subject is really difficult; they have not hit on the proper methods of investigation; they had not the advantages of proper subjects, and proper instruments; they were not sufficiently masters of their own time; they did not live to accomplish what they had begun; or they laid before the public the pro- duce of a fertile imagination, in the place of a true description. I have, in another part of this treatise, already taken notice ofthe anatomists who wrote first on the absorbents; and the reader is supposed to be ac- quainted with Asellius, Veslingius, Rudbeck, and Bartholine. Their united labours amounted to little more than the discovery of the lacteals, some lymphatics of the liver and testicle, with the thoracic duct. Nor does any one appear, for a long time after, to have added any thing to their stock of knowledge. If I afterwards make it appear, that some other parts of this system were known, yet, as this knowledge was not general, but con- fined to private societies or persons, and formed what Haller would call crepuscula: lymphaticorum, it will not invalidate the general assertion I have now made. Hallcr knew all these facts I allude to; yet he says, " Post ea tcmpora, (liu nihil accessit, et multum haee historia etiam Hunt at perfectionc abest, neque in omnibus partibus corporis animalis hzec vasa demonstrata sunt, neque systema absolutum est, quale ad arterias corpo- ris humani possidernus. Mnlta: enim partes corporis sum, in quibus vasa Iymphatica ncmo \‘idit, aha: ubi ct raro quisquam, et cum dubio aliquo. ‘ Ad ..V. . ... .. "an." A |