Afterwards I visited Monsieur Steno, who I found infinitely taking and agreeable in conversation and I observed in him \very much/ of the Galant and honist man as the French say, as well as of the Schollar
In my Lords cabinet he had shewed as the two ductis from of his Discovery[1] from the Glanduls on each side the cheeke in an Ox-head[2] as alsoe foure 4 of the like nature two in the upper side or outeward angle of the eye and two other in the nether sid[e] or inward angle of the eye as alsoe the passage out for this liquor brought in by the foure Ductus in the very inward corner of the eye through the Os lachrymale and soe along into the nostrils,[3] as likewise from the nostrils into the Palat[e].
Moreover he shewed us that the make of Muscles was not as the Ancients pleased, that as the Fibres lay not in a straight line from Tendon to Tendon but made alternate Angles with the two Tendon etc.[4]
Folio 225 verso
Att his Lodgings I saw him dissect a Dogg. where he shewed us the small milkie filements from the Gutts to the Gland in the mid-mesenterie,[5] from thence their course into the Receptacular [[one word]] or cisterna,[6] whence the Chyle passed along up the left side up under the Axille,[7] where he plainely shewed us the Insertion into the Veine ¾ his preparation was by turning over the shoulder blad[e] to him wards and carefully cutting away the nerves and bareing by little and little the other Vessels. This preparation succeeded soe well under his hands, that it was manifest that whereas at first sight the blood recurred from the veine and coloured red the insertion or part of the Lacteall vessel, which by pressing lightly the Recept. was repulsed again by the chyle and the blood carried with the veine backe again together with the chyle and the Insertion whither as being filled with chyle. again, the chyle disappeared by pressing two Lympheducts which made the insertion transparent as it were soe that in the same common vessel we saw now blood, now chyle and then the liquor of the Lymphyducts according to the order as we desired them of him. This blood could not be forced from the veine as the Lymphyduct further than the Valvula, which stopped apparently
[1] Steno’s duct.
[2] Parotid glands.
[3] Nasolacrimal duct.
[4] Kardel has demonstrated that ‘based on several of his observations, Nicolaus Steno in 1664 and 1667 proposed that muscles shorten when fibres shorten, and that skeletal muscles consist of uniform motor fibres layered as pennate structures. The basis for a new myology was provided in a geometrical model of the movement of the muscles’. Fibre shortening, however, was incompatible with the ancient theory of contraction by inflation favoured by Descartes and by Steno’s contemporaries William Croone, Thomas Willis, John Mayow, and Giovanni Borelli. See T. Kardel, ‘Nicolaus Steno’s new myology (1667): rather than muscle, the motorfibre should be called animal’s organ of movement’, Nuncius 23 (2008), 37-64.
[5] Probably mesenteric lymph notes passing into the larger lymphatics.
[6] Receptaculum chyli. The first discoverers of the thoracic duct, described it as beginning from a pyriform bag, to which they gave the name of receptaculum chyli (now known as cisterna chyli). In humans one sees an irregular dilation of the vessel, a sac at the lower end of the thoracic duct into which lymph from the intestinal trunk and two lumbar lymphatic trunks flow. The cisterna chyli is the primary lymph vessel transporting lymph and chyle from the abdomen, and most common drainage trunk of the body’s lymphatic system.
[7] Armpit.