angle, therefore the heart is round, for fear any poison or hurtful matter should be retained in it; and because that figure is fittest for motion.
Q. How comes the blood chiefly to be in the heart? A. The blood in the heart has its proper or efficient place, which some attribute to the liver; and therefore the heart doth not receive blood from any other parts but all other parts of it.
Q. How happens it that some creatures want a heart? A. Although they have no heart, yet they have somewhat that answers for it, as appears in eels and fish that have the back bone instead of the heart.
Q. Why does the heart beat in some creatures after the head is cut off, as in birds and hens? A. Because the heart lives first and dies last, and therefore beats longer than other parts.
Q. Why doth the heat of the heart sometimes fail of a sudden, and in those who have the falling sickness? A. This proceeds from the defect of the heart itself, and of certain small skins with which it is covered, which, being infected and corrupted, the heart faileth on a sudden; sometimes only by reason of the parts adjoining; and therefore, when any venomous humour goes out of the stomach
that turns the heart and parts adjoining, that causeth this fainting.
Of the Stomach.
Q. For what reason is the stomach large and wide? A. Because in it the food is first concocted or digested as it were in a pot, to the end that which is pure should be separated from that which is not; and therefore, according to the quantity of food, the stomach is enlarged.
Q. How comes it that the stomach is round? A. Because if it had angles and corners, food would remain in them and breed ill-humours, so that a man would never want agues, which humours are evacuated and consumed, and not hid in any such corners, by the roundness of the stomach.