Some choice excerpts:

“St Augistine claims to have seen a man who could command his bottom to break wind as often as he wished, and Vives, his commentator, caps him with another case from his own day of a man who could synchronize his blasts to the metre of verses that were read to him.” 

“Indeed, I know one such that is so turbulent and so intractable that for the last forty years it has compelled its master to break wind with every breath. So unremittingly constant is it in its tyranny that it is even now bringing him to his death.”

…

“Tortoises and ostriches hatch their eggs merely by looking at them —a proof that their eyes have some ejaculative power.”