privy counsellor and chancellor to the heart.  The second region is the chest, or middle belly, in which the heart as king keeps his court, and by his arteries communicates life to the whole body.  The third region is the lower belly, in which the liver resides as a Legat a latere, with the rest of those natural organs, serving for concoction, nourishment, expelling of excrements.  This lower region is distinguished from the upper by the midriff, or diaphragma, and is subdivided again by [961]some into three concavities or regions, upper, middle, and lower.  The upper of the hypocondries, in whose right side is the liver, the left the spleen; from which is denominated hypochondriacal melancholy.  The second of the navel and flanks, divided from the first by the rim.  The last of the water course, which is again subdivided into three other parts.  The Arabians make two parts of this region, Epigastrium and Hypogastrium, upper or lower. Epigastrium they call Mirach, from whence comes Mirachialis Melancholia, sometimes mentioned of them.  Of these several regions I will treat in brief apart; and first of the third region, in which the natural organs are contained.

De Anima.—­The Lower Region, Natural Organs.] But you that are readers in the meantime, “Suppose you were now brought into some sacred temple, or majestical palace” (as [962]Melancthon saith), “to behold not the matter only, but the singular art, workmanship, and counsel of this our great Creator.  And it is a pleasant and profitable speculation, if it be considered aright.”  The parts of this region, which present themselves to your consideration and view, are such as serve to nutrition or generation.  Those of nutrition serve to the first or second concoction; as the oesophagus or gullet, which brings meat and drink into the stomach.  The ventricle or stomach, which is seated in the midst of that part of the belly beneath the midriff, the kitchen, as it were, of the first concoction, and which turns our meat into chylus.  It hath two mouths, one above, another beneath.  The upper is sometimes taken for the stomach itself; the lower and nether door (as Wecker calls it) is named Pylorus.  This stomach is sustained by a large kell or caul, called omentum; which some will have the same with peritoneum, or rim of the belly.  From the stomach to the very fundament are produced the guts, or intestina, which serve a little to alter and distribute the chylus, and convey away the excrements.  They are divided into small and great, by reason of their site and substance, slender or thicker:  the slender is duodenum, or whole gut, which is next to the stomach, some twelve inches long, saith [963] Fuschius.  Jejunum, or empty gut, continuate to the other, which hath many mesaraic veins annexed to it, which take part of the chylus to the liver from it.  Ilion the third, which consists of many crinkles, which serves with the rest to receive, keep, and distribute the