[291] _Turkish_ History. [292] In the Poet _Dante_ his Discription. _Omnibonus Ferrarius_[293] in mortal Dysenteries of Children looks for a Spot behind the Ear; in consumptive Diseases some eye the Complexion of Moles; _Cardan_ eagerly views the Nails, some the Lines of the Hand, the Thenar or Muscle of the Thumb; some are so curious as to observe the depth of the Throat-pit, how the Proportion varieth of the Small of the Legs unto the Calf, or the compass of the Neck unto the Circumference of the Head: but all these, with many more, were so drown'd in a mortal Visage, and last Face of _Hippocrates_, that a weak Physiognomist might say at first Eye, This was a Face of Earth, and that _Morta_[294] had set her hard Seal upon his Temples, easily perceiving what _Caricatura_[295] Draughts Death makes upon pined Faces, and unto what an unknown degree a Man may live backward. [293] _De Morbis Puerorum._ [294] _Morta_, the Deity of Death or Fate. [295] When Men's Faces are drawn with Resemblance to some other Animals, the _Italians_ call it, to be drawn in _Caricatura_. Tho' the Beard be only made a Distinction of Sex, and Sign of masculine Heat by _Ulmus_, yet the Precocity and early Growth thereof in him, was not to be liked in reference unto long Life. _Lewis_, that virtuous but unfortunate King of _Hungary_, who lost his Life at the Battle of _Mohacz_, was said to be born without a Skin, to have bearded at fifteen,[296] and to have shewn some grey Hairs about twenty; from whence the Diviners conjectur'd, that he would be spoiled of his Kingdom, and have but a short Life: But Hairs make fallible Predictions, and many Temples early grey have out-liv'd the Psalmist's Period.[297] Hairs which have most amused me have not been in the Face or Head, but on the Back, and not in Men but Children, as I long ago observed in that Endemial Distemper of little Children in _Languedock_, call'd the _Morgellons_,[298] wherein they critically break out with harsh Hairs on their Backs, which takes off the unquiet Symptoms of the Disease, and delivers them from Coughs and Convulsions. [296] _Ulmus de usu barbæ humanæ._ [297] The Life of a Man is threescore and ten. [298] See _Picotus de Rheumatismo_.