Aristotle's works:: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women with Various Useful Remedies
Aristotle · en
3. A nervous or sinewy production is led from the bottom of the bladder
of the infant to the navel, and this is called _urachos_; and its use is
to convey the urine of the infant from the bladder to the alantois.
Anatomists do very much vary in their opinions concerning this; some
denying any such thing to be in the delivery of the woman; and others,
on the contrary, affirming it: but experience has testified there is
such a thing; for Bartholomew Carbrolius, the ordinary doctor of anatomy
to the College of Physicians at Montpelier, in France, records the
history of a maid, whose water, being a long time stopped, at last
issued out through the navel. And Johannes Fernelius speaks of the same
thing that happened to a man of thirty years of age, who, having a
stoppage at the neck of the bladder, his urine issued out of his navel
many months together, and that without any prejudice at all to his
health; which he ascribes to the ill lying of his navel whereby the
urachos was not well dried. And Volchier Coitas quotes such another
instance in a maid of thirty-four years of age, at Nuremberg, in
Germany. These instances, though they happen but seldom, are sufficient
to prove that there is such a thing as an urachos in men.
These four vessels before-mentioned, viz. one vein, two arteries, and
the urachos, do join near to the navel, and are united by a skin, which
they have from the chorion, and so become like a gut or rope, and are
altogether void of sense, and this is that which women call the
navel-string. The vessels are thus joined together, that so they may
neither be broken, severed nor entangled; and when the infant is born
are of no use, save only to make up the ligament which stops the hole of
the navel, and some other physical use, &c.
_Of the_ SECUNDINE, _or After-Birth_.
Setting aside the name given to this by the Greeks and Latins, it is
called in English by the name of secundine, after-birth, or
after-burden; which are held to be four in number.
I. The _first_ is called placentia, because it resembles the form of a
cake, and is knit both to the navel and chorion, and makes up the
greatest part of the secundine, or after-birth. The flesh of it is like
that of the melt, or spleen, soft, red, and tending something to
blackness, and hath many small veins and arteries in it; and certainly
the chief use of it is, for containing the child in the womb.
2. The _second_ is the chorion. This skin, and that called the amnios,
involve the child round, both above and underneath, and on both sides,
which the alantois doth not. This skin is that which is most commonly
called the secundine, as it is thick and white, garnished with many
small veins and arteries, ending in the placentia before named, being
very light and slippery. Its use is not only to cover the child round
about, but also to receive and safely bind up the roots of the veins and
arteries or navel vessels before described.