Q. Why have beasts a back?  A. 1.  Because the back is the way and mien of the body from which are extended and spread throughout, all the sinews of the backbone. 2.  Because it should be a guard and defence for the soft parts of the body, as for the stomach, liver, lights and such like. 3.  Because it is the foundation of all the bones, as the ribs, fastened to the back bone.

Q. Why hath the back bone so many joints or knots, called spondyli?  A. Because the moving and bending it, without such joints, could not be done; and therefore they are wrong who say that elephants have no such joints, for without them they could not move.

Q. Why do fish die after their back bones are broken?  A. Because in fish the back bone is instead of the heart; now the heart is the first thing that lives and the last that dies; and when that bone is broken, fish can live no longer.

Q. Why doth a man die soon after the marrow is hurt or perished?  A. Because the marrow proceeds from the brain, which is the principal part of a man.

Q. Why have some men the piles?  A. Those men are cold and melancholy, which melancholy first passes to the spleen, its proper seat, but there cannot be retained, for the abundancy of blood; for which reason it is conveyed to the back bone, where there are certain veins which terminate in the back, and receive the blood.  When those veins are full of the 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.