uation, he came to be almost half himself, and left a great part behind him, which he carried not to the grave. And though that story of Duke John Ernestus Mansfield<7>* be not so easily swallowed, that at his death his heart was found not to be so big as a nut; yet if the bones of a good skeleton weigh little more than twenty pounds, his inwards and flesh remaining could make no bouffage,<8> but a light bit for the grave. I never more lively beheld the starved characters of Dante+ in any living face; an aruspex might have read a lecture upon him without exenteration, his flesh being so consumed, that he might, in a manner, have discerned his bowels without opening of him; so that to be carried, sexta cervice# to the grave, was but a civil unnecessity; and the complements of the coffin might outweigh the subject of it.

Omnibonus Ferrarius in mortal dysenteries of chil- dren looks for a spot behind the ear; in consumptive diseases some eye the complexion of moles; Cardan eagerly views the nails, some the lines of the hand, the thenar or muscle of the thumb; some are so curious as to observe the depth of the throat-pit, how the pro- portion varieth of the small of the legs unto the calf, or the compass of the neck unto the circumference of the head; but all these, with many more, were so drowned in a mortal visage, and last face of Hippocra- tes, that a weak physiognomist might say at first eye, this was a face of earth, and that Morta$ had set her hard seal upon his temples, easily perceiving what caricatura||

* Turkish history. + In the poet Dante's description. # i.e. "by six persons." $ Morta, the deity of death or fate. || When men's faces are drawn with resemblance to some other animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn in caricatura.

draughts death makes upon pined faces, and unto what an unknown degree a man may live backward.

Though the beard be only made a distinction of sex, and sign of masculine heat by Ulmus,* yet the precocity and early growth thereof in him, was not to be liked in reference unto long life. Lewis, that virtuous but unfortunate king of Hungary, who lost his life at the battle of Mohacz,<9> was said to be born without a skin, to have bearded at fifteen, and to have shown some grey hairs about twenty; from whence the diviners conjectured that he would be spoiled of his kingdom, and have but a short life; but hairs make fallible predictions, and many temples early grey have outlived the psalmist's period.+ Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the face or head, but on the back, and not in men but children, as I long ago observed in that endemial distemper of children in Languedoc, called the mor- gellons,# wherein they critically break out with harsh hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symp- toms of the disease, and delivers them from coughs and convulsions. The Egyptian mummies that I have seen, have had their mouths open, and somewhat gaping, which afford- eth a good opportunity to view and observe their teeth, wherein 'tis not easy to find any wanting or decayed; and therefore in Egypt, where one man practised but one operation, or the diseases but of single parts, it must needs be a barren profession to confine unto that of drawing of teeth, and to have been little better than tooth-

* Ulmus de usu barbae humanae. + The life of man is threescore and ten. # See Picotus de Rheumatismo.

drawer unto King Pyrrhus,* who had but two in his head.

How the banyans of India maintain the integrity of those parts, I find not particularly observed; who not- withstanding have an advantage of their preservation by abstaining from all flesh, and employing their teeth in such food unto which they may seem at first framed, from their figure and conformation; but sharp and corroding rheums had so early mouldered these rocks and hardest parts of his fabric, that a man might well conceive that his years were never like to double or twice tell over his teeth.+ Corruption had dealt more severely with them than sepulchral fires and smart flames with those of burnt bodies of old; for in the burnt fragments of urns which I have inquired into, although I seem to find few incisors or shearers, yet the dog teeth and grinders do notably resist those fires.

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