Page:Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (IA b3032449x).pdf/171

 in Anatomy, and so pass on. Gellius (r) and Macrobius (s) observe; the one from Appion, who wrote of the Egyptians; the other from the Egyptian Priests themselves, that there is a particular Nerve that goes from the Heart to the little Finger of the Left-Hand, for which Reason they always wore Rings upon that Finger; and the Priests dipped that Finger in their perfumed Ointments; this being ridiculed by Conringius, Borrichius (t) assures us that he always found something to countenance this Observation upon cutting of his Nails to the quick: Pliny in the 37th. Chapter of the 11th. Book of his Natural History, and Censorinus in the 17th. Chapter of his little Book De Die Natali, give this following Reason from Dioscorides the Astrologer, why a Man cannot live above a Hundred Years, because the Alexandrian Embalmers observed a constant Increase and Diminution of Weight of the Hearts of those sound Persons whom they opened, whereby they judged of their Age. They found that the Hearts of Infants of a Year old weighed two Drachms, and this Weight encreased Annually by two Drachms every Year till Men came to the Age of Fifty Years: At which Time they as gradually decreased till they came to an Hundred,