CHAP. XIII. Of the Mouth.
THe mouth is that capacity which bounded with the cheekes & lips containes * 1.1 within its precincts the teeth, tongue, and the beginnings of the throttle and gullet. Therfore the use of the mouth is to conteine the tongue, & serve it in the fitter performance of its actions; & although many parts hereof have bin formerly handled, as the lips, teeth, Iawes, tongue, almonds, & passages of the palate comming from the nose, yet it remaines, that we declare, what the palate, the Gargareon; or Vvula the Pharinx, & fauces or Chops are. The palate (or as it is commonly called, the Roofe * 1.2 of the mouth) is nothing else but the upper part of the mouth bounded with the teeth gums & upper Iaw. In which place the coate common to the whole mouth, is made rough with divers wrincles, that the meats put up & down between the tongue & the Palate might be broken & chawed more easily by that inequality and roughnes. If any * 1.3 would finde the nerves, which descend into the palat from the fourth conjugation, let him separate that coat & cast it from the fore to the hind part of the mouth; for so he shal find them at the sides & hinde parts of the bones of the Palate, which incompasse the palate, & at the beginning of the inner holes of the mouth, which descend from the nose, & region of the productions of the wedgbone called the Saddle. These holes or * 1.4 passages are open, that we may breath the better when we sleep, & that when the nose is not well, the excrements which seeke their passage by it, may be easilier drawn away by the mouth. This same coate is woven with nervous fibers, that, like the tongue, it might judge of tasts; these fibers cōpose a coat that hath a middle consistence betwixt * 1.5 soft & hard. For if it should have beene any harder, like a bone or gristle, it would have been without sense, but if softer hard, acride and sharpe meats would have hurt it.