melancholy blood, then the conduits of nature are opened, and the blood issues out once a month, like women's terms. Those men who have this course of blood, are kept from many infirmities, such as dropsy, plague, etc.
Q. Why are the Jews much subject to this disease? A. Because they eat much phlegmatic and cold meats, which breed melancholy blood, which is purged with the flux. Another reason is, motion causes heat and heat digestion; but strict Jews neither move, labour nor converse much, which breeds a coldness in them, and hinders digestion, causing melancholic blood, which is by this means purged out.
Of the Heart.
Q. Why are the lungs light, spongy and full of holes? A. That the air may be received into them for cooling the heart, and expelling humours, because the lungs are the fan of the heart; and as a pair of bellows is raised up by taking in the air, and shrunk by blowing it out, so likewise the lungs draw the air to cool the heart, and cast it out, lest through too much air drawn in, the heart should be suffocated.
Q. Why is the flesh of the lungs white? A. Because they are in continual motion.
Q. Why have those beasts only lungs that have hearts? A. Because the lungs be no part for themselves, but for the heart, and therefore, it were superfluous for those creatures to have lungs that have no hearts.
Q. Why do such creatures as have no lungs want a bladder? A. Because such drink no water to make their meat digest and need no bladder for urine; as appears in such birds as do not drink at all, viz., the falcon and sparrow hawk.
Q. Why is the heart in the midst of the body? A. That it may import life to all, parts of the body, and therefore it is compared to the sun, which is placed in the midst of the planets, to give light to them all.
Q. Why only in men is the heart on the left side? A. To the end that the heat of the heart may mitigate the coldness of the spleen; for the spleen is the seat of melancholy, which is on the left side also.