CXI. _Luisa Sigea_, a native of Toledo, but of French extraction, besides being skilled in philosophy, and sound literature, was ornamented in a singular manner, with a knowledge of languages, for she understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and it is said, she wrote a letter to pope Paul III. in each of these languages. Her father, Diego Sigea, being afterwards called to the court of Lisbon, as preceptor to Theodosius of Portugal duke of Braganza; the infanta Donna Maria of Portugal, daughter of the king Don Manuel, and of his third wife, Donna Leonora of Austria, who was a great lover of letters, took much pleasure in the company of the learned Sigea; who afterwards married with Francisco de Cuevas, the Lord of Villanasur, and a cavalier of Burgos, from which marriage, as Don Luis Salazar informs us in his history of the house of Farnese, there descended a fine progeny, which are now living in Castile. CXII. _Donna Oliva Sabuco de Nantes_, a native of Alcaraz, was a woman of sublime penetration, and of an elevated genius, eminent for her knowledge of physical, medicinal, moral, and political matters, as may be seen by her writings; but the thing which most illustrated and distinguished her, was her new phisiological system, where, in opposition to all the antients, she maintained, that it is not the blood which invigorates the body, but a white fluid issuing from the brain, which pervades the whole nervous system; and she attributes almost all disorders to this vital dew being vitiated. This system, which the incuriosity of Spain neglected, the curiosity of England embraced with eagerness, and now we receive from the hands of strangers as their invention, that, which in reality was originally our own. Fatal genius of Spaniards, who, in order that what is produced in their own country should seem pleasing to them, must have it first monopolized by strangers, and afterwards by those strangers sold to them again. It seems also, that this great woman was beforehand with Renard Descartes, in broaching the opinion, that the brain was the seat of the rational soul, though she did not, like Descartes, confine its habitation to the pineal gland only, but supposed it to occupy the whole substance. The confidence which Donna Oliva had in her own abilities to defend her singular opinions, was such; that in an epistle-dedicatory addressed to count Barajas, president of Castile, she intreats him to use his authority, to convene together the most learned natural philosophers, and doctors of medicine in Spain, and that she would undertake to convince them, that the physics, and medicinal doctrines, which were taught in the schools, went all on erroneous principles. She flourished in the reign of Philip II.