LXXX. I believe that from the blunder of mistaking two effects of the same cause, the one for the cause, and the other for the effect, arose the opinion, which is so common among medical people; that all fluxions wherever they fall, the gout not excepted, descend from the head; and it being very common, for those who are affected with acrid fluxions that fall on any part of the body, to feel pains and heaviness in their heads; I suppose that from thence sprung the notion, that all fluxions originate in, and are derived from the brain; but there are not a few modern physicians who are of a contrary sentiment, and in my opinion they are right. LXXXI. In the first place, I do not know why the vicious humours, from whence the matter of fluxions are derived, should make the grand circuit through the head, before they fall on any particular part that is at a distance from it; as they could, by being mixed with the blood in their circulation through the veins and arteries, be derived immediately from them, on any member or part of the body. LXXXII. Secondly, if such a vast quantity of humour, as is discharged by some fluxions, was to be lodged in the brain, it seems to me that it must render a man quite stupid, and that organ incapable of exercising any of its functions. LXXXIII. Thirdly, it is not easy to point out the channel, through which the humour passes from the interior part of the head. Many pretend to say it passes through the Ethmoides, or Os Criboso; but Sneider denies this, for that you cannot find any cavities or perforations in this bone, through which those humours could flow, and especially if they are pituitous and clammy, as the antients supposed them to be; and to this we may add, that this bone is entirely covered or lined by the meninges, and the interior tunic of the nose. It is true, as Doctor Matinez observes in his treatise on anatomy, that its upper part is very porous, and that from thence it came to be called the os criboso, or spungy bone; but as these spungy pores do not pervade the whole bone, and are not pierced through it, setting aside the obstacle it would meet with from the membranes or tunics that surround it, the humour could not pass that way. If it is insisted, that it flows through the nervous ducts, I ask how it comes not to be attended with obstructions, that must produce dangerous consequences?