have hard hair are boldest, because such have proceeded from heat and choler, examples of which we have in the bear and the boar; and contrariwise, those beasts that have soft hair are fearful, because they are cold, as the hare and the hart. 3.  From the climate where a man is born; because in hot regions hard and gross hair is engendered, as appears in the Ethiopians, and the contrary is the case is cold countries toward the north.

Q. Why have some men curled hair, and some smooth?  A. From the superior degree of heat in some men, which makes the hair curl and grow upward; this is proved by a man’s having smooth hair when he goes into a hot bath, and it afterwards becomes curled.  Therefore keepers of baths have often curled hair, as also Ethiopians and choleric men.  But the cause of this smoothness, is the abundance of moist humours.

Q. Why do women show ripeness by hair in their privy parts, and not elsewhere, but men in their breasts?  A. Because in men and women there is abundance of humidity in that place, but most in women, as men have the mouth of the bladder in that place, where the urine is contained, of which the hair in the breast is engendered, and especially that about the navel.  But of women in general, it is said, that the humidity of the bladder of the matrix, or womb, is joined and meeteth in that lower secret place, and therefore is dissolved and separated in that place into vapours and fumes, which are the cause of hair.  And the like doth happen in other places, as in the hair under the arms.

Q. Why have not women beards?  A. Because they want heat; which is the case with some effeminate men, who are beardless from the same cause, to have complexions like women.

Q. Why doth the hair grow on those that are hanged?  A. Because their bodies are exposed to the sun, which, by its heat doth dissolve all moisture into the fume or vapour of which the hair doth grow.

Q. Why is the hair of the beard thicker and grosser than elsewhere; and the more men are shaven, the harder and thicker it groweth?  A. Because by so much as the humours or vapours of a liquid are dissolved and taken away, so much the more doth the humour remaining draw to the same; and therefore the more the hair is shaven, the thicker the humours gather which engender the hair, and cause it to wax hard.

Q. Why are women smooth and fairer than men?  A. Because in women much of the humidity and superfluity, which are the matter and cause of the hair of the body, is expelled with their monthly terms; which superfluity, remaining in men, through vapours passes into hair.