An oft-used literary cliche´ has something coursing in someone's veins:
"The adrenaline coursing in his veins merged each moment..."
"... the palpable high coursing in his veins..."
"The blood coursing in his veins felt thick and sluggish."
"With his own blood coursing in his veins, the characteristics..."
" music was always coursing in his veins."
"the milk of human kindness was now coursing in his veins..."
"...even then the poison which Selima has secretly administered -recalling the murderous act of Voltaire's Mohammed-is coursing in his veins..."
"pomposity coursing in his veins like steroids through an Olympic athlete..."
"he felt “the old fire of 1848” coursing in his veins."
"for the music coursing in his veins had chased it out."
"..and the wine of life was coursing in his veins."
"the assassin coursing in his veins was less forgiving than the cocaine..."
"a chill having nothing to do with the venom coursing in his veins."
"The thrill of making the next biggest profit of all time was always coursing in his veins."
"Wine and desire coursing in his veins like the raging fires..."
"As for Puff the Magic Diaz, I’m pretty sure the boxing lesson and the gogo weren’t because of the THC coursing in his veins."
Omigod! It's worse than I thought. Somebody stop me!! [The above lines -- all of them -- came from a search for the term. Don't blame me. And there were lots more.]
So anyhow, here's the thing: blood in the veins is the depleted, the metabolized stuff. Oxidized, alkylated, detoxified, it's the left-overs. The good stuff, potent and active, is in the arteries. So how is it that writers -- those many, varied, and sometimes-awful writers -- came to see the veins as the carriers of, of... whatever, when clearly it should be the arteries? I'm not going to lose sleep, but really, someone ought to look into it.
