The order of proceeding required that we should treat first of the fabric and frame of the human body, which consists in the seat and order of the bones of which it is composed, but there are in this matter so many subtleties and secrets and so many marvels, that neither would I know how to declare them, nor could the reader understand them. For even those themselves who study this faculty on purpose are not content with what doctrine teaches them, but they also make use of figures and images that represent it. And not even this suffices them, but they pass on to make anatomy in human bodies newly dead, so that not only the understanding, but also the eyes, may be witnesses and judges of the doctrine. Where it must be noted that the ancient physicians held it as a thing of great horror to make this experience in human bodies, and for this reason they did it in the animals that were found most similar to them. And so that the pride and vanity of gentle men and women may be lowered, and they may see of what they vaunt themselves, let them know that the bodies that the ancients found most similar to ours, although it is shame to say it, were those of apes and pigs. And thus Galen, who treated this matter more divinely and at length, ruled himself in all that he wrote by the fabric of the bodies of apes. And for this reason he is now corrected by the new anatomists, who found by experience that in some things our bodies differ from those of these animals.
Thus, because this matter is so various and of so much subtlety, I ought not to intermeddle in it, notwithstanding that there is no bone in it, great nor small, that is not preaching the wisdom and providence of the Creator who traced this. I shall only say that the frame of the human body is composed of many pieces, and is all as if made of hinges, so that thus man may be able to play with all his members, and move them without difficulty. And let no one think that these pieces are few, because (as above we touched) these bones are many, which all are linked one into another with certain fittings so adjusted and proportioned and so perfectly compassed, that none of as many carvers as there are in the world could make them with so much compass and perfection.
And so that the bones should not be disjointed, the Creator provided cords so firm and such ligaments around these joints, that it is not possible for one bone to be disjointed from another, except with some great violence. Then all these fittings, with their cords and ligaments, together with the figure of the same bones so proportioned and measured for the consistency and service of the human body, are voices that are preaching the wisdom
of that sovereign artificer who, without compass and without rule, and without any other instrument, traced all this in the entrails of a woman, without her putting hand to this work.
And if there is some example with which we can understand something of the artifice of this work, it is the one that we already put of the fabric of a braided harness, which, accommodating itself to the members of the human body, covers them from feet to head, and thus also is composed of diverse pieces with their joints, so that the armed man may be able to lower himself, and rise, and move and bend the arms, and grip the lance and the sword in the hand. In all which art imitates nature, insofar as it is possible to it, because in everything it cannot, which, other advantages left aside, is known by seeing how heavily and with difficulty an armed man commands his members, and with how much ease the members of the human body are moved (as is seen in those who run, and turn somersaults, and dance), the number of the bones and joints of our body being much greater than the pieces of any harness.
This fabric can also be compared with that of a high house, framed upon two columns, because the legs serve here as columns that sustain all this building, whose bases are the feet, upon which they are sustained. And the rest is the building of the house, which goes fastened and linked, with the bones of the spine that go up along the back to the last part of the head, all made of diverse pieces, like a chain of diverse links, with their marvelous fittings, from which the ribs proceed, just as in the high part of the building there is a principal beam that takes from wall to wall, from which proceed the side-beams, or those that they call rafters, which sustain the planking with which the building is covered and finished. Then upon this frame of bones the Creator extended the flesh and the skin for beauty of the human body, just as, after the walls of a house have been raised, we whitewash and adorn it, so that it may appear more beautiful. For he who traced all this fabric was so wise, that he joined in one the two things of greatest perfection and most difficult to join of as many as there are, which are profit and beauty, and this with such refinement and artifice, that the most profitable is most beautiful, and the most beautiful most profitable, as is seen in the fabric and site of all the senses and parts that we see in human faces, which, neither for their offices nor for beauty, could have either another figure or another site than the one they have. This frame of bones also serves, not only for the firmness and stature of the body, but also to shelter the weak with the strong, as further on we shall see, which is also another providence of this supreme artificer, teaching us in this that the great and powerful in the republic must be not flayers, but defenders of those who can do little. Let this suffice for what touches the frame and fabric of the building of our bodies; now we shall begin to treat of the work of nutrition with which they are sustained.