Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten BooksAristotle
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Aristotle's History of Animals: In Ten Books
Aristotle
Zoology -- Pre-Linnaean works
3. In the same number of days after conception the discharge no longer
takes its usual course, but is turned towards the mammæ, in which
the milk begins to make its appearance. At first the milk appears
very small, and like a web in the mammæ. After conception, the first
sensation generally takes place in the iliac region, which immediately
appears more full in some persons. This is more conspicuous in slight
persons. If the child is a male, a movement is usually felt on the
right side of the groin, in about forty days; if a female, the movement
occurs on the left side, in about ninety days. We must not suppose,
however, that an accurate judgment can be formed in this way, for it
often happens that the movement is felt on the right side when a female
child, and on the left when a male child is conceived. All these, and
such like things, vary in a greater or less degree.
4. About this period, also, the fœtus becomes divided; it previously
existed as an undivided mass of flesh. If it perishes within seven
days, it is called an effluxion; if in forty days, an abortion. The
fœtus often perishes within this period. If the male fœtus is excluded
within forty days, and is put out into any other fluid, it becomes
dissolved, and disappears. If placed in cold water, it becomes, as it
were, surrounded with a membrane. When this is taken off, the fœtus
appears about as large as a large ant. Its parts are visible, both
those of generation, and all the rest; and the eyes are very large, as
in other animals. If the female fœtus perishes within the three months,
it generally appears without divisions. If it survives to the fourth
month, the parts appear formed.
5. The whole completion of the parts is more slow in the female than
in the male, and parturition is more frequently delayed to the tenth
month. After birth, females attain to youth, and puberty, and old age,
more rapidly than males, and those that have borne many children more
rapidly than others, as it was observed before.
CHAPTER IV.
1. When conception has taken place, the uterus usually closes
immediately for seven months. In the eighth month it opens, and the
fœtus, if properly developed, begins to descend in the eighth month. If
the fœtus is not properly developed, but checked in the eighth month in
parturition, women who bear in the eighth month do not exclude it, nor
does the fœtus advance downwards in the eighth month, and the uterus
does not open itself. It is a sign that it is not properly developed,
when it is born before the circumstances I have described take place.
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