Folio 85r - the nature of man, continued.
is placed like a vault over the mouth; the word comes from polus, a pole, or figuratively, the sky. The Greeks call the palate uranus [ouranos], since in its curved shape it resembles the sky.
The throat, fauces, gets its name from the phrase fundere voces, 'to produce sounds', or because we speak, fari, through it.
The windpipes, artherie, are so called because air, that is the breath, aer, is conveyed through them from the lung, or because they keep the vital breath in narrow, artus, confined passages. From these they produce the sounds of the voice. The sounds would be all of one kind if the movements of the tongue did not make them different.
Toles, a word in the Gallic tongue meaning goitre, becomes in common speech, by diminution, toxilli, tonsils, which often swell up in the throat.
The chin is called mentum, or 'coping stone', because the two mandibles begin or are joined together there.
The soft palate, gurgulio, gets its name from guttur, the gullet. Its passage extends to the mouth and nostrils, having within it a channel by which the sounds of the voice are sent to the tongue, so that it can bring them together as words. From this we get the word garrire, to babble.
Next to the windpipe is the oesophagus, rumen, by which we swallow food and drink. Hence animals which regurgitate food and chew it again, are said to ruminate, ruminare.
The epiglottis, sublinguium, is otherwise known as 'the lid' of the windpipe. It is like a little tongue which shuts off the opening at the rear of the tongue from secretions such as phlegm.
The neck, collum, is so called because it is rigid and rounded like a column, columpna, carrying the head and supporting it like a capitol.
The front part is called the throat, gula; the rear, the nape, cervix. The nape, cervix, is so called because the brain, cerebrum, is linked in a straight line through that section to the spinal chord; it is, so to speak, cerebri via, 'the route of the brain'.
The ancients spoke of napes, or necks, in the plural. Hortensius was the first to speak of it in the singular. In fact, cervix in the singular means that specific part of the body. In the plural, it often signifies 'obstinate resistance'. Cicero in his orations against Verres: 'You accuse the praetor. Curb your boldness, cervices' (6,110).
The shoulders humeri,
