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. All
animals, then, whose is healthy in composition and supplied with
none but sweet blood, are either entirely without a gall-bladder on
this organ, or have merely small bile-containing vessels; or are
some with and some without such parts. Thus it is that the liver in
animals that have no gall-bladder is, as a rule, of good colour and
sweet; and that, when there is a gall-bladder, that part of the
liver is sweetest which lies immediately underneath it. But, when
animals are formed of blood less pure in composition, the bile
serves for the excretion of its impure residue. For the very meaning
of excrement is that it is the opposite of nutriment, and of bitter
that it is the opposite of sweet; and healthy blood is sweet. So
that it is evident that the bile, which is bitter, cannot have any
use, but must simply be a purifying excretion. It was therefore no bad
saying of old writers that the absence of a gall-bladder gave long
life. In so saying they had in mind deer and animals with solid hoofs.
For such have no gall-bladder and live long. But besides these there
are other animals that have no gall-bladder, though those old
writers had not noticed the fact, such as the camel and the dolphin;
and these also are, as it happens, long-lived. Seeing, indeed, that
the liver is not only useful, but a necessary and vital part in all
animals that have blood, it is but reasonable that on its character
should depend the length or the shortness of life
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