Q. Why are the paps below the breasts in beasts, and above the breast in women? A. Because woman goes upright, and has two legs only; and therefore if her paps were below her breasts, they would hinder her going; but beasts having four feet prevents that inconveniency.
Q. Whether are great, small or middle-sized paps best for children to suck? A. In
great ones the heat is dispersed, there is no good digestion of the milk; but in small ones the power and force is strong, because a virtue united is strongest; and by consequence there is a good digestion for the milk.
Q. Why have not men as great paps and breasts as women? A. Because men have not monthly terms, and therefore have no vessel deputed for them.
Q. Why do the paps of young women begin to grow about thirteen or fifteen years of age? A. Because then the flowers have no course to the teats, by which the young one is nourished, but follow their ordinary course and therefore wax soft.
Q. Why hath a woman who is with child of a boy, the right pap harder than the left? A. Because the male child is conceived in the right side of the mother; and therefore the flowers do run to the right pap, and make it hard.
Q. Why doth it show weakness of the child, when the milk doth drop out of the paps before the woman is delivered? A. Because the milk is the proper nutriment of the child in the womb of its mother, therefore if the milk run out, it is a token that the child is not nourished, and consequently is weak.
Q. Why do the hardness of the paps betoken
the health of the child in the womb? A. Because the flowers are converted into milk, and thereby strength is signified.
Q. Why are women's paps hard when they be with child, and soft at other times? A. Because they swell then, and are puffed, and the great moisture which proceeds from the flowers doth run into the paps, which at other seasons remaineth in the matrix and womb, and is expelled by the place deputed for that end.