Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies — Aristotle — John Shaqi
Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
Q. Why are men judged to be good or evil complexioned by the colour of
their nails? A. Because they give witness of the goodness or badness of
the heart, and therefore of the complexion; for if they be somewhat red,
they betoken choler well tempered; but if they be yellowish or black,
they signify melancholy.
Q. Why do white spots appear in the nails? A. Through mixture of phlegm
with the nutriment.
_Of the Paps and Dugs._
Q. Why are the paps placed upon the breasts? A. Because the breast is
the seat of the heart, which is most hot; and therefore the paps grow
there, to the end that the menses being conveyed thither, as being near
to the heat of the heart, should the sooner be digested, perfected, and
converted into the matter and substance of the milk.
Q. Why are the paps below the breasts in beasts, and above the breasts
in woman? A. Because woman goes upright, and has two legs only: and
therefore if her paps were below her breasts, they would hinder her
going; but beasts having four feet prevents that inconveniency.
Q. Why have not men as great paps and breasts as women? A. Because men
have not monthly terms, and therefore have no vessel deputed for them.
Q. Whether are great, small or middle-sized paps best for children to
suck? A. In great ones the heat is dispersed, and there is no good
digestion of the milk; but in small ones the power and force is strong,
because a virtue united is strongest, and by consequence there is a good
digestion of the milk.
Q. Why do the paps of young women begin to grow about 13 or 15 years of
age? A. Because then the flowers have no course to the teats, by which
the young one is nourished, but follow their ordinary course, and
therefore wax soft.
Q. Why hath a woman who is pregnant of a boy, the right pap harder than
the left? A. Because the male child is conceived in the right side of
the mother: and therefore the flowers do run to the right pap and make
it hard.
Q. Why doth it show weakness of the child, when the milk doth drop out
of the paps before the woman is delivered? A. Because the milk is the
proper nutriment of the child in the womb of the mother; therefore if
the milk run out, it is a token that the child is not nourished, and
consequently is weak.
Q. Why doth the hardness of the paps betoken the health of the child in
the womb? A. Because the flowers are converted into milk, and that milk
doth sufficiently nourish the child, and thereby strength is signified.
Q. Why are women’s paps hard when they be pregnant, and soft at other
times? A. Because they swell then, and are puffed up; and the great
moisture which proceeds from the flowers doth run into the paps, which
at other seasons remaineth in the matrix or womb, and is expelled by the
place deputed for that end.