Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 004.djvu/158

This page needs to be proofread.

(1044)

Graeff (if we mistake him not;) yet if it shall appeare; that they are really made up of vessels, though of never so many sorts, I humbly conceive you will not think the Experiment lost, because I suppose the chief thing intended by these trials to be, that it may be well known, what indeed the Body of the Testes is made of; Whether indeed it be a Congeries or Vessels and Liquors without any intermediate substance, as was asserted by me to many of this Honorable Company, several years agoe, concerning most if not all parenchymous parts, which was inserted in Numb. 18 of the Ph. Transactions, since which time I have made several Experiments of the same kind, about the Testes, the Pancreas, and other so esteem'd Glands; and as far as I have examined them, I find them to be only a Texture of fine Tubes or ducts, with more or less liquor, without any other substance.

But perceiving, the Testes of several Animals to be variously composed and intertext; I proceeded ad Testiculos Tauri, which I have dissected and ordered several wayes; some boyled, others broiled, broiled, others infused in Spirit of wine, hot and cold; &c. and upon the best examination, I can make, I cannot see any of this intermediate substance, or indeed anything else, that is not Vessel or Liquor.

Now in obedience to your comands, I have added another Experiment, and that is Testiculi humani, (the exact knowledge of whose fabrick we suppose to be chiefly aimed at in this kind of Inquiry,) hoping to prove it clearly, and perhaps to put it out of dispute, That it is nothing else but a Congeries of Vessels of various forts, and their several Liquors; and that there is no such thing as an intermediate substance (by what name soever it be call'd;) And to demonstrate this, I think, it will evidently appear: to the bare Eye, by what I have here expanded,* which is the true genuine substance Testiculi humani, I mean, the Body of it, after the Tunica albuginea is remov'd, without any addition or diminution, excepting only what Liquors are dryed up during the time of the Expansion, which could not he prevented in making such a Scheme of it,

*See Fig. 1. which represents only the 4th or 5th part of what was exhibited of the same testis after the same manner with this on Glass.as