But Doña Oliva did not reject more active remedies, on the contrary she advised all such as men had learnt from animals, and this included a powerful list, for she seems to have believed all the fables with which natural history in old times abounded, and of which indeed it may almost be said to have consisted. More reasonably she observed that animals might teach us the utility of exercise, seeing how the young lambs sported in the field, and dogs played with each other, and birds rejoiced in the air. When the stomach required clearing she prescribed a rough practice, that the patient should drink copiously of weak wine and water, and of tepid water with a few drops of vinegar and an infusion of camomile flowers; and that he should eat also things difficult of digestion, such as radishes, figs, carrots, onions, anchovies, oil and vinegar, with plenty of Indian pepper, and with something acid the better to cut the phlegm which was to be got rid of; having thus stored the stomach well for the expenditure which was to be required from it, the patient was then to lay himself on a pillow across a chair, and produce the desired effect either by his fingers or by feathers dipt in oil. After this rude operation which was to refresh the brain and elevate the pia mater, the stomach was to be comforted. To bathe the whole body with white wine was another mode of invigorating the pia mater; for there it was that all maladies originated, none from the liver; the nature of the liver, said she, is that it cannot err; _es docta sin doctor._ The latter treatises in her book are in Latin, but she not unfrequently passes, as if unconsciously, into her own language, writing always livelily and forcibly, with a clear perception of the fallacy of the established system, and with a confidence, not so well founded, that she had discovered the real nature of man and thereby laid the foundation of a rational practice, conformable to it. CHAPTER CCXVIII. THE MUNDANE SYSTEM AS COMMONLY HELD IN D. OLIVA'S AGE.—MODERN OBJECTIONS TO A PLURALITY OF WORLDS BY THE REV. JAMES MILLER. _Un cerchio immaginato ci bisogna, A voler ben la spera contemplare; Cosi chi intender questa storia agogna Conviensi altro per altro immaginare; Perchè qui non si canta, e finge, e sogna; Venuto è il tempo da filosofare._ PULCI.