A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Sabuco, (Donna Oliva de Nantis)
S.
SABUCO (DONNA OLIVA DE NANTIS), born at Alcarez, in Spain, in the time of Philip II.
"Had a most sublime and extensive genius, which shines forth in her writings on physical, moral, and political subjects. But what she is most to be praised for is her new physiological and medical system; in which, contrary to all the ancients, she maintains that it is not the blood which nourishes our bodies, but that white juice, which issuing from the brain, pervades all the nerves; and to distempers in this vital lymph she attributes most diseases and complaints. This system, which was neglected in Spain, raised the admiration, and inflamed the curiosity of England, so that others assumed the honour of it, though due to a Spanish lady. She was prior to the celebrated Descartes, in the opinion that the rational soul resided in the brain, but extended it to the whole substance, and did not like him confine it to the pineal gland. Donna Oliva was so confident of her ability to maintain her opinions, that, in the dedication of one of her works to the president of Castile, she requested that an assembly of the most learned naturalists and physicians might be convened; offering to shew, beyond denial, that the natural philosophy and physic then taught in the schools, were wide of the mark."