The liver is the chief fundament of kindly virtue, and greatest helper
of the first digestion in the stomach, and the liver maketh perfectly
the second digestion in the stomach, in the hollowness of its own
substance, and departeth clean and pured, from unclean and unpured,
and sendeth feeding to all the members, and exciteth love or bodily
lust, and receiveth divers passions. Then the liver is a noble and
precious member, by whose alteration the body is altered, and the
liver sendeth feeding and virtues of feeding to the other members, to
the nether without mean, and to the other, by mean of the heart.

Some men ween, that the milt is cause of laughing. For by the spleen
we are moved to laugh, by the gall we are wroth, by the heart we are
wise, by the brain we feel, by the liver we love.




IV

MEDIAEVAL GEOGRAPHY


The fourteenth and fifteenth books of the "De Proprietatibus" are
treatises on the geography of the time. Very few words of the editor's
are needed to introduce them to modern readers. They may be divided
into two classes: one, interesting because of the legends they
preserve for us, the other, as reflecting the social life of the time.
The first class is represented here by the accounts of the Amazons, of
India, of Ireland, and of Finland. Here we have the outlines of the
stories--