Q. Why are such as are deaf by nature, dumb?  A. Because they cannot speak and express that which they never hear.  Some physicians do say, that there is one knitting and uniting of sinews belonging to the like disposition.  But such as are dumb by accident are not deaf at all, for then there ariseth a local passion.

Q. Why doth itching arise when an ulcer doth wax whole and phlegm ceases?  A. Because the part which is healed and made sound doth pursue the relic of the humours which remained there against nature, and which was the cause of the bile, and so going out through the skin, and dissolving itself, doth originally cause the itch.

Q. How comes a man to sneeze oftener and more vehemently than a beast?  A. Because he uses more meats and drinks, and of more different sorts, and that more than is requisite; the which, when he cannot digest as he would, he doth gather together much air and spirit, by reason of much humidity; the spirits then very subtle, ascending into the head, often force a man to void them, and so provoke sneezing.  The noise caused thereby proceeds from a vehement spirit or breath passing through the conduit of the nostrils, as belching doth from the stomach or farting by the fundament, the voice by the throat, and a sound by the ear.

Q. How come the hair and nails of dead people to grow?  A. Because the flesh rotting, withering and falling away, that which was hidden about the root of the hair doth now appear as growing.  Some say that it grows indeed, because carcasses are dissolved in the beginning to many excrements and superfluities by putrefaction.  These going out at the uppermost parts of the body by some passages, do increase the growth of the hair.

Q. Why does not the hair of the feet soon grow grey?  A. For this reason, because that through great motion they disperse and dissolve the superfluous phlegm that breeds greyness.  The hair of the secrets grows very late, because of the place, and because that in carnal copulation it dissolves the phlegm also.

Q. Why, if you put hot burnt barley upon a horse’s sore, is the hair which grows upon the sore not white, but like the other hair?  A. Because it hath the force of expelling; and doth drive away and dissolve the phlegm, as well as all other unprofitable matter that is gathered together through the weakness of the parts, or condity of the sore.

Q. Why doth the hair never grow on an ulcer or bile?  A. Because man hath a thick skin, as is seen by the thickness of his hair; and if the scar be thicker than the skin itself, it stops the passages from whence the hair should grow.  Horses have thinner skins, as is plain by their hair; therefore all passages are not stopped in their wounds and sores; and after the excrements which were gathered together have broken a passage through those small pores the hair doth grow.

Q. Why is Fortune painted with a double forehead, the one side bald and the other hairy?  A. The baldness signifies adversity, and hairiness prosperity, which we enjoy when it pleaseth her.