gods you shall digest the venom of your spleen, though it do split you; for, from this day forth, i'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter, when you are waspish. the spleen, as a byword for melancholy, has also been considered an actual disease. in the early 18th century, the physician richard blackmore considered it to be one of the two most prevalent diseases in england (along with consumption). in 1701, anne finch (later, countess of winchilsea) had published a pindaric ode, the spleen, drawing on her first-hand experiences of an affliction which, at the time, also had a reputation of being a fashionably upper-class disease of the english. both blackmore and george cheyne treated this malady as the male equivalent of "the vapours", while preferring the more learned terms "hypochondriasis" and "hysteria". in the late 18th century, the german word spleen came to denote eccentric and hypochondriac tendencies that were thought to be characteristic of english people. in french, "splénétique" refers to a state of pensive sadness or melancholy. this usage was popularised by the poems of charles baudelaire (1821–1867) and his collection le spleen de paris, but it was also present in earlier 19th-century romantic literature. food the spleen is one of the many organs that may be included in offal. it is not widely eaten as a principal ingredient, but cow spleen sandwiches are eaten in sicilian cuisine. chicken spleen is one of the main ingredients of jerusalem mixed grill. other animals laparoscopic view of a horse's spleen (the purple and grey mottled organ) in cartilaginous and ray-finned fish, the spleen consists primarily of red pulp and is normally somewhat elongated, as it lies inside the serosal lining of the intestine. in many amphibians, especially frogs, it has the more rounded form and there is often a greater quantity of white pulp. in reptiles, birds, and mammals, white pulp is always relatively plentiful, and in birds and mammals the spleen is typically rounded, but it adjusts its shape somewhat to the arrangement of the surrounding organs. in most vertebrates, the spleen continues to produce red blood cells throughout life; only in mammals this function is lost in middle-aged adults. many mammals have tiny spleen-like structures known as haemal nodes throughout the body that are presumed to have the same function as the spleen. the spleens of aquatic mammals differ in some ways from those of fully land-dwelling mammals; in general they are bluish in colour. in cetaceans and manatees they tend to be quite small, but in deep diving pinnipeds, they can be massive, due to their function of storing red blood cells. the only vertebrates lacking a spleen are the lampreys and hagfishes (the early-branching cyclostomata, or jawless fishes). even in these animals, there is a diffuse layer of haematopoeitic tissue within the gut wall, which has a similar structure to red pulp and is presumed homologous with the spleen of higher vertebrates. in mice the spleen stores half the body's monocytes so that upon injury, they can migrate to the injured tissue and transform into dendritic cells and macrophages to assist wound healing. additional images transverse section of the spleen, showing the trabecular tissue and the splenic vein and its tributaries spleen laparoscopic view of human spleen