BLOOD
—is the well known fluid issuing from wounds, or separated vessels, in an accidental destruction of parts: it is not only the very basis, but the support, of life itself; and drawn from the frame of any animal beyond a certain proportion (professionally ascertained,) causes instant death. In the regular routine of the animal œconomy, blood is generated by the frequent supplies of nutritive aliment, and retaining within itself sufficient strength and power for its own peculiar purposes, throws off, by the different emunctories, the superflux with which it may be encumbered: but as medical or anatomical disquisition is not intended in a work of this general kind, it must suffice to observe, that, from the blood in its original and first formed state, proceeds all the progressive and superior functions of Nature. From the blood issues every gradational proportion of insensible, sensible and profuse perspiration; from the blood, the urine is secreted (or separated) by the kidnies; and from the blood is extracted, by the genitals, that very masculine semen, by which (we are told from high and indisputable authority) our posterity is to be continued to the end of time.