veins, after passing through a fine network of tubes called the
capillaries.

Turning to what may be called the popular physiology of the time, we
may note the change, since mediaeval times, in the allocation of
properties to the organs of the body. In our days, the heart and brain
set aside, we find no organ mentioned in connection with the various
faculties of the body, while up to Shakespeare's time each organ had
its passion. Some of these emotions have much changed their seats.
True love, which now reigns over the heart, then took its rise in the
liver. The friar in "Much Ado about Nothing" says of Claudio, "If ever
love had interest in his liver"; and the Duke in "Twelfth Night,"
speaking of women's love, says:

"Alas, their love may be call'd appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate."

The heart, on the other hand, was considered as the seat of wisdom.

The spleen is now almost a synonym for bitterness of spirit, but it
used to be regarded as the source of laughter. Isabella in "Measure
for Measure," after the well-known quotation about man dressed in a
little brief authority who plays such apish tricks as make the angels
weep, says they would laugh instead if they had spleens:

"Who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal."

The brain in mediaeval times was regarded only as the home of the
"wits of feeling"--the senses.