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the arteries, and so distributed to every part of the body; then finding its way through the veins and vena cava round to the right ventricle, which, in its turn, sends it through the pulmonary artery to the lungs, to return by the pulmonary veins to the left side of the heart, to what Aristotle says of the air and rain emulating the circular motion of the superior bodies. As the vapours drawn upwards from the moist earth warmed by the sun, descend as rain to moisten the earth again, so it is with the blood. Cooled, coagulated, and rendered effete by contact with the various parts of the body, it is brought back again to its sovereign, the heart, as to its source or inmost home, there to recover its excellent and perfect state, to resume its due fluidity and natural heat (powerful, fervid, a kind of treasury of life) to be impregnated with spirits, as it were with balsam, and so sent back on the old errand of nourishing, cherishing, and quickening every part of the frame. The heart consequently is the beginning of life; the sun of the microcosm, even as the sun might be called the heart of the world; for by the virtue and pulse of the heart the blood is moved, perfected, made apt to nourish, and preserved from corruption and coagulation. It is