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seen. For example, if you open the mouth wide
you will draw in no fluid ; but if you protrude and
contract it, compressing the lips, and then insert
a tube, you can easily draw up any liquid you wish.
Again, cupping instruments, which are broad and
tapering, are so constructed on purpose to draw and
attract blood from the flesh. There are many other
instruments of a similar nature. Of the parts within
the human frame, the bladder, the head, and the
womb are of this structure. These obviously attract
powerfully, and are always full of a fluid from without.
Hollow and expanded parts are especially
adapted for receiving fluid that has flowed into them,
but are not so suited for attraction. Round solids
will neither attract fluid nor receive it when it has
flowed into them, for it would slip round and find no
place on which to rest. Spongy, porous parts, like
the spleen, lungs and breasts, will drink up readily
what is in contact with them, and these parts
especially harden and enlarge on the addition of
fluid. They will not be evacuated every day, as are
bowels, where the fluid is inside, while the bowels
themselves contain it externally ; but when one of
these parts drinks up the fluid and takes it to itself,
the porous hollows, even the small ones, are every-where
filled, and the soft, porous part becomes hard
and close, and neither digests nor discharges. This
happens because of the nature of its structure. When
wind and flatulence are produced in the body, the
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