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ON THE NATURAL FACULTIES Book I
PART 6
[p. 23]blending of these, for example, the bone-producing, nerve-producing, and cartilage-producing faculties
The terms Galen actually uses are: ostopoietic, neuropoietic, chondropoietic.
(since for the sake of clearness these names must be used as well).
Now the peculiar
As we should say, parenchyma (a term used by Erasistratus).
flesh of the liver is of this kind as well, also that of the spleen, that of the kidneys, that of the lungs, and that of the heart; so also the proper substance of the brain, stomach, gullet, intestines, and uterus is a sensible element, of similar parts all through, simple, and uncompounded. That is to say, if you remove from each of the organs mentioned its arteries, veins, and nerves,
These were all the elementary tissues that Aristotle, for example, had recognized; other tissues (e.g. flesh or muscle)he believed to be complexes of these.
the substance remaining in each organ is, from the point of view of the senses, simple and elementary. As regards those organs consisting of two dissimilar coats
Or tunics.
, of which each is simple, of these organs the coats are the are the elements- for example, the coats of the stomach, oesophagus, intestines, and arteries; each of these two coats has an alterative faculty peculiar to it, which has engendered it from the menstrual blood of the mother. Thus the special alterative faculties in each animal are of the same number as the elementary parts
i.e. issues.
; and further, the activities must necessarily correspond each to one of the special parts, just as each part has its special use- for example, those ducts which extend from the kidneys into the bladder, and which are called ureters; for these are not arteries, since they do not pulsate nor do they consist of two coats; and they
