Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/244



She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the damsel defeated the Koranist and took off his clothes and sent him away confused, then came forward the skilled physician and said to her, "We are free of theology and come now to physiology. Tell me, therefore, how is man made; how many veins, bones and vertebrae are there in his body; which is the first and chief vein and why Adam was named Adam?" She replied, "Adam was called Adam, because of his udmah, that is, the wheaten colour of his complexion and also (it is said) because he was created of the adim of the earth, that is to say, of the surface-soil. His breast was made of the earth of the Ka'abah, his head of earth from the East and his legs of earth from the West. There were created for him seven doors in his head, viz., the eyes, the ears, the nostrils and the mouth, and two passages, before and behind. The eyes were made the seat of the sight-sense, the ears the seat of the hearing-sense, the nostrils the seat of the smell-sense, the mouth the seat of the taste-sense and the tongue to utter what is in the heart of man. [FN#393] Now Adam was made of a compound of the four elements, which be water, earth, fire and air. The yellow bile is the humour of fire, being hot-dry; the black bile that of earth, being cold-dry; the phlegm that of water, being cold-moist, and the blood that of air, being hot-moist. [FN#394] There were made in man three hundred and sixty veins, two hundred and forty-nine bones, and three souls [FN#395] or spirits, the animal, the rational and the natural, to each of which is allotted its proper function. Moreover, Allah made him a heart and spleen and lungs and six intestines and a liver and two kidneys and buttocks and brain and bones and skin and five senses; hearing, seeing, smell, taste, touch. The heart He set on the left side of the breast and made the stomach the guide and governor thereof. He appointed the lungs for a fan to the heart and stablished the liver on the right side, opposite thereto. Moreover, He made, besides this, the diaphragm and the viscera and set up the bones of the breast and latticed them