So that, in his
view (Fig. 2), the course of the blood was from the intestine to the
liver, and from the liver into the great 'vena cava', including what we
now call the right auricle of the heart, whence it was distributed by
the branches of the veins. But the whole of the blood was not thus
disposed of. Part of the blood, it was supposed, went through what we
now call the pulmonary arteries (Fig. 1), and, branching out there, gave
exit to certain "fuliginous" products, and at the same time took in
from the air a something which Galen calls the 'pneuma'. He does not
know anything about what we call oxygen; but it is astonishing how very
easy it would be to turn his language into the equivalent of modern
chemical theory. The old philosopher had so just a suspicion of the
real state of affairs that you could make use of his language in many
cases, if you substituted the word "oxygen," which we now-a-days use,
for the word 'pneuma'. Then he imagined that the blood, further
concocted or altered by contact with the 'pneuma', passed to a certain
extent to the left side of the heart.
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