Introduction to Astronomy

...color is varied, eyes deep, the sharpness of the eyes acute, full of white and swollen, they consider her to be pregnant. To discern the sex, they handle the pregnant woman. If they feel it full, round, agile, and hard, and she is of clear color, they predict a male; if oblong, wide, inept, and she is of spotted color, they testify it is a female, with the nipples of the breasts drawing toward a red color in the male, and toward a dusky color in the female. Also, by another way: for the milk of the pregnant woman taken between the fingers, if it is felt to be thick and viscous, is a sign of a male; if thin and liquid, a female. Likewise another: for the milk of the pregnant woman, poured upon a mirror of iron and thus placed equally toward the rays of the Sun, if it flows together in the likeness of a pearl unio, it carries a male; if it flows apart and expands, a female. When she is giving birth, they look at the head of the infant as the offspring falls onto the ground; if they see a mass of hair as if in curls, they foresee that she will subsequently give birth to a male. And thus, with twin curls, twins. For they also consider the domini fortune lords of fortune as a sign of prosperity among them, as often as the birth emerges with a healthy sac. Then, measuring the number of future generation, they handle the sac of the firstborn infant adhering to the womb of the mother before it is dissolved; in which, as many nodes or as if calculi stones they find, so many future births they count. If these are not found, they foresee that she will give birth to nothing thereafter, doubting nothing in these things unless perhaps she has been confused by a prior miscarriage. Thus, in this way, since the use of experiments is of such authority among common wits, so also among physicians, the providence of their cure is in the firm certainty of experiments. They foresee, to whom there is a firmer experience of this art, among natural things and things surrounding nature, through the seasons of the year and the climates of the lands, a certain type of humor in human bodies. But for the others, up to how much it prevails for each part, then what is wholesome for whom and what is harmful, the increases, decreases, states, and alterations of the body itself in its discomfort, according to the nature of each and the passive things that are contrary to nature, they measure by certain limits—not through a collation between both kinds of natural things. This, however, is through these alterations of the movements of the elements, and the causes of the alterations of the movements, the powers of the stars, not remembering the experience of movements, but the power of the Sun, heat; the power of the Moon, humors; the movement of both the stars and constellations with these through mixture. This kind of craft, therefore, is as much more worthy than the common ones as it is closer to ours. The office of medicine in its more worthy part is: first, to perceive the materials of the bodies, namely the natures of the elements, subtly; then, to mix them with proportionality preserved in the bodies; finally, to treat the movements of the accidents from the necessary access and recession of nature. But the office of astrology in its secondary part is, from the movement of the stars, to measure the movements of the elements and the alterations of the times, and both of the world itself and of its parts—here generally, here specially—the movements of the accidents. As, therefore, the physician is first instructed by sensible experiments, then advanced to the properties of nature...