For trees that are cut in the full of the moon carpenters refuse, as being soft, and, by reason of their moistness, subject to corruption; and in its wane farmers usually thresh their wheat, that being dry it may better endure the flail; for the corn in the full of the moon is moist, and commonly bruised in threshing.

Besides, they say dough will be leavened sooner in the full, for then, though the leaven is scarce proportioned to the meal, yet it rarefies and leavens the whole lump.
Now when flesh putrefies, the combining spirit is only changed into a moist consistence, and the parts of the body separate and dissolve.

And this is evident in the very air itself, for when the moon is full, most dew falls; and this Alcman the poet intimates, when he somewhere calls dew the air's and moon's daughter, saying, See how the daughter of the Moon and Air Does nourish all things.
Thus a thousand instances do prove that the light of the moon is moist, and carries with it a softening and corrupting quality.

Now the brazen nail that is driven through the flesh, if, as they say, it keeps the flesh from putrefying, doth it by an astringent quality proper to the brass.

The rust of brass physicians use in astringent medicines, and they say those that dig brass ore have been cured of a rheum in their eyes, and that the hair upon their eyelids hath grown again; for the particles rising from the ore, being insensibly applied to the eyes, stops the rheum and dries up the humor, and upon this account, perhaps; Homer calls brass [Greek omitted] and [Greek omitted], and Aristotle says, that wounds made by a brazen dart or a brazen sword are less painful and sooner cured than those that are made of iron weapons, because brass hath something medicinal in itself, which in the very instant is applied to the wound.