Breeze_, or _that I may have enjoyment_. The oldest meaning of the word
_artery_, ἀρτηρία, in Hippocrates, Aristotle and the earlier Latin
writers is _wind-pipe_, and, in the plural, _air-ducts_. But, even when
the word was also applied to what we call arteries, these were supposed
to convey _air_ whilst the veins conveyed _blood_. “Sanguis per venas in
omne corpus diffunditur et spiritus per arterias” is the classic
doctrine in Cicero (_de Natura Deorum_, 2, 55). Pliny says (_Nat.
Hist._, XI, 89), “arteriae carent sensu: nam et sanguine.” This error is
corrected by Galen, who has a treatise on the question “Whether Blood is
_naturally_ (κὰτα φύσιν) contained in the arteries?” The error of the
ancients arose from the arteries always being found empty after death.
The blood flowing from a wound inflicted upon them was inferred to have
been intruded into them by the rupture of the veins. The Egyptian
doctrine of the ‘arteries’ ⁂⁂⁂ (Coptic ϩⲁⲛⲙⲟⲩⲧ) in the head,
by means of which air is conveyed to all parts of the person, was first
found by M. Chabas in the _Berlin Medical papyrus_. The passage of the
Book of the Dead on which this note is written is no doubt the earliest
allusion to the doctrine.