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
The body of the womb is that wherein the child is conceived; and this is
not altogether round, but dilates itself into two angles, the outward
part of it nervous and full of sinews, which are the cause of its
motion, but inwardly it is fleshy. In the cavity of the womb there are
two cells or receptacles for the seed, divided by a line running through
the midst of it. In the right side of the cavity, by reason of the heat
of the liver, males are conceived; and in the left side, by the coldness
of the spleen, females. Most of our moderns hold the above as an
infallible truth, yet Hippocrates holds it but in general: “For in whom
(saith he) the spermatic vessels on the right side come from the reins,
and the spermatic vessels on the left side from the hollow vein, in them
males are conceived in the left side, and females in the right.”
Empedocles, in giving his opinion, says, “Such sometimes is in the power
of the seed, that the male may be conceived in the left side, as well as
in the right.” In the bottom of the cavity, there are little holes
called the cotiledones, which are the ends of certain veins and
arteries, serving in breeding women to convey substance to the child
which is received by the umbilical veins; and others to carry their
courses into the matrix.
The menstruals are a monthly flux of excrementitious blood, which is to
be understood of the surplus or redundance of it. For it is an excrement
in quality, its quality being poor and corrupt, like unto the blood in
the veins. This is proved two ways; first, from the final cause of the
blood, which is the propagation and conservation of mankind, that man
might be conceived; and being begotten, he might be comforted and
preserved both in the womb and out of the womb. And all will grant it
for a truth, that a child, in the matrix, is nourished with the blood.
And being out of the womb, it is still nourished with the same; for the
milk is nothing but the menstruous blood made white in the breast.
Secondly, it is proved to be true, from the generation of it, it being
the superfluity of the last aliment of the fleshy part.