Inaugural Medical Dissertation on Blind and Open Hemorrhoids

III. Whence Recent Physicians (as asserted by Riolanus), following the doctrine of the Arabs, not content with those internal [veins] proceeding from the gate, the evacuators of bad humors, added also External Hemorrhoids proceeding from the Vena Cava, which they called the depleters of Plethora. Truly, the descending trunk of the Vena Cava (which pervades the whole body) expands itself similarly into various branches, so that from here it leads to the Adipose Vein, the emulgents, lumbars, spermatics, [and] iliacs: this last, bifurcated around the fifth lumbar vertebra, produces four others from each branch: Hypogastric, muscular, epigastric, and pudendal. Of which the Hypogastric, being most ample, does not only approach the urinary bladder, the womb of women, and the penis of men, but also, by sending an offshoot into the extreme rim of the rectum, it finally produces that which is called the external Hemorrhoidal; which Aquapend. in the cited place illustrates most diligently with many [arguments], and Piccolhominius mentions it before him in anatomical lectures 13. They established that this serves not only for the nutrition of the sphincter muscle, but also that humors abundant in the whole body are evacuated through it. And this much [we have recounted] according to the mind of the Ancients and of the previous Century.