The Works of William Harvey M.D. / Translated from the Latin with a life of the author

by William Harvey

EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-SECOND.

Of the primigenial moisture.

We have now dignified the blood with the title of the innate heat; with like propriety, we believe, that the fluid which we have called the crystalline colliquament, from which the fœtus and its parts primarily and immediately arise, may be designated the radical and primigenial moisture. There is certainly nothing in the generation of animals to which this title can with better right be given.

We call this the radical moisture, because from it arises the first particle of the embryo, the blood, to wit; and all the other posthumous parts arise from it as from a root; and they are procreated and nourished, and grow and are preserved by the same matter.

We also call it primigenial, because it is first engendered in every animal organism, and is, as it were, the foundation of the rest; as may be seen in the egg, in which it presents itself after a brief period of incubation, as the first work of the inherent fecundity and reproductive power.

This fluid is also the most simple, pure, and unadulterated body, in which all the parts of the pullet are present potentially, though none of them are there actually. It appears that nature has conceded to it the same qualities which are usually ascribed to first matter common to all things, viz. that potentially it be capable of assuming all forms, but have itself no form in fact. So the crystalline humour of the eye, in order that it might be susceptible of all colours, is itself colourless; and in like manner are the media or organs of each of the senses destitute of all the other qualities of sensible things: the organs of smelling and hearing, and the air which ministers to them, are without smell and sound; the saliva of the tongue and mouth is also tasteless.

And it is upon this argument that they mainly rely who maintain the possibility of an incorporeal intellect, viz. because it is susceptible of all forms without matter; and as the hand is called the “instrument of instruments,” so is the intellect called “the form of forms,” being itself immaterial and wholly without form; it is, therefore, said to be possible or potential, but not passible.

This fluid, or one analogous to it, appears also to be the ultimate aliment from which Aristotle taught that the semen, or geniture, as he calls it, is produced.[350] I say the ultimate aliment, called dew by the Arabians, with which all the parts of the body are bathed and moistened. For in the same way as this dew, by ulterior condensation and adhesion, becomes alible gluten and cambium, whence the parts of the body are constituted, so, mutatis mutandis, in the commencement of generation and nutrition, from gluten liquefied and rendered thinner is formed the nutritious dew: from the white of the egg is produced the colliquament under discussion, the radical moisture and primigenial dew. The thing indeed is identical in either instance, if any credit be accorded to our observations; and in fact neither philosophers nor physicians deny that an animal is nourished by the same matter out of which it is formed, and is increased by that from which it was engendered. The nutritious dew, therefore, differs from the colliquament or primigenial moisture only in the relation of prior and posterior; the one is concocted and prepared by the parents, the other by the embryo itself, both juices, however, being the proximate and immediate aliment of animals; not indeed “first and second,” according to that dictum, “contraria ex contrariis,” but ultimate, as I have said, and as Aristotle himself admonishes us, according to that other dictum, “similia ex similibus augeri,” “like is necessarily increased by its like.” There is in either fluid a proximate force, in virtue of which, no obstacles intervening, it will pass spontaneously, or by the law of nature, into every part of the animal body.

Such being the state of the question, it is obvious that all controversy about the matter of animals and their nourishment may be settled without difficulty. For as some believe that the semen or matter emitted in intercourse is taken up from every part of the body, so do they derive from this the resemblance of the offspring to the parents. Aristotle has these words: “Against the opinion of the ancients, it may be said that as they avow the semen to be a derivative from all parts else, we believe the semen to be disposed of itself to form every part; and whilst they call it a colliquament, we are rather inclined to regard it as an excrement” (he had, however, said shortly before that he entitled excrement the remains of the nourishment, and colliquament that which is secreted from the growth by a preternatural resolution); “for that which arrives last, and is the excrement of what is final, is in all probability of the same nature; in the same way as painters have very commonly some remains of colours, which are identical with those they have applied upon their canvass; but anything that is consuming and melting away is corrupt and degenerate. Another argument that the seminal fluid is not a colliquament, but an excrement, is this: that animals of larger growth are less prolific, smaller creatures more fruitful. Now there must be a larger quantity of colliquament in larger than in smaller animals, but less excrement; for as there must be a large consumption of nourishment in a large body, so must there be a small production of excrement. Farther, there is no place provided by nature for receiving and storing colliquament; it flows off by the way that is most open to it; but there are receptacles for all the natural excrements—the bowels for the dry excrements, the bladder for the moist; the stomach for matters useful; the genital organs, the uterus, the mammæ for seminal matter—in which several places they collect and run together.” After this he goes on by a variety of arguments to prove that the seminal matter from which the fœtus is formed is the same as that which is prepared for the nutrition of the parts at large. As if, should one require some pigment from a painter, he certainly would not go to scrape off what he had already laid on his canvass, but would supply the demand from his store, or from what he had over from his work, which was still of the same nature as that which he might have taken away from his picture. So and in like manner the excrement of the ultimate nutriment, or the remainder of the gluten and dew, is carried to the genital organs and there deposited; and this view is most accordant with the production of eggs by the hen.

The medical writers, too, who hold all the parts to be originally formed from the spermatic fluid, and consequently speak of these under the name of spermatic parts, say that the semen is formed from the ultimate nourishment, which with Aristotle they believe to be the blood, being produced by the virtue of the genital organs, and constituting the “matter” of the fœtus. Now it is obvious enough that the egg is produced by the mother and her ultimate nutriment, the nutritious dew, to wit. That clear part of the egg, therefore, that primigenial, or rather antegenial colliquament, is more truly to be reputed the semen of the cock, although it is not projected in the act of intercourse, but is prepared before intercourse, or is gathered together after this, as happens in many animals, and as will perhaps be stated more at length by and by, because the geniture of the male, according to Aristotle, coagulates.

When I see, therefore, all the parts formed and increasing from this one moisture, as “matter,” and from a primitive root, and the reasons already given combine in persuading us that this ought to be so, I can scarcely refrain from taunting and pushing to extremity the followers of Empedocles and Hippocrates, who believed all similar bodies to be engendered as mixtures by association of the four contrary elements, and to become corrupted by their disjunction; nor should I less spare Democritus and the Epicurean school that succeeded him, who compose all things of congregations of atoms of diverse figure. Because it was an error of theirs in former times, as it is a vulgar error at the present day, to believe that all similar bodies are engendered from diverse or heterogeneous matters. For on this footing, nothing even to the lynx’s eye would be similar, one, the same, and continuous; the unity would be apparent only, a kind of congeries or heap—a congregation or collection of extremely small bodies; nor would generation differ in any respect from a [mechanical] aggregation and arrangement of particles.

But neither in the production of animals, nor in the generation of any other “similar” body (whether it were of animal parts, or of plants, stones, minerals, &c.), have I ever been able to observe any congregation of such a kind, or any divers miscibles pre-existing for union in the work of reproduction. For neither, in so far at least as I have had power to perceive, or as reason will carry me, have I ever been able to trace any “similar” parts, such as membranes, flesh, fibres, cartilage, bone, &c., produced in such order, or as coexistent, that from these, as the elements of animal bodies, conjoined organs or limbs, and finally, the entire animal, should be compounded. But, as has been already said, the first rudiment of the body is a mere homogeneous and pulpy jelly, not unlike a concrete mass of spermatic fluid; and from this, under the law of generation, altered, and at the same time split or multifariously divided, as by a divine fiat, from an inorganic an organic mass results; this is made bone, this muscle or nerve, this a receptacle for excrementitious matter, &c.; from a similar a dissimilar is produced; out of one thing of the same nature several of diverse and contrary natures; and all this by no transposition or local movement, as a congregation of similar particles, or a separation of heterogeneous particles is effected under the influence of heat, but rather by the segregation of homogeneous than the union of heterogeneous particles.

And I believe that the same thing takes place in all generation, so that similar bodies have no mixed elements prior to themselves, but rather exist before their elements (these, according to Empedocles and Aristotle, being fire, air, earth, and water; according to chemists, salt, sulphur, and mercury; according to Democritus, certain atoms), as being naturally more perfect than these. There are, I say, both mixed and compound bodies prior to any of the so called elements, into which they are resolved, or in which they end. They are resolved, namely, into these elements according to reason rather than in fact. The so-called elements, therefore, are not prior to those things that are engendered, or that originate, but are posterior rather—they are relics or remainders rather than principles. Neither Aristotle himself nor any one else has ever demonstrated the separate existence of the elements in the nature of things, or that they were the principles of “similar” bodies.

The philosopher,[351] indeed, when he proceeds to prove that there are elements, still seems uncertain whether the conclusion ought to be that they exist in esse, or only in posse; he is of opinion that in natural things they are present in power rather than in action; and therefore does he assert, from the division, separation, and solution of things, that there are elements. It is, however, an argument of no great cogency to say that natural bodies are primarily produced, or composed of those things into which they are ultimately resolved; for upon this principle some things would come out composed, of glass, ashes, and smoke, into which we see them finally reduced by fire; and as artificial distillation clearly shows that a great variety of vapours and waters of different species can be drawn from so many different bodies, the number of elements would have to be increased to infinity. Nor has any one among the philosophers said that the bodies which, dissolved by art, are held pure and indivisible in their species, are elements of greater simplicity than the air, water, and earth, which we perceive by our senses, which we are familiar with through our eyes.

Nor, to conclude, do we see aught in the shape of miscible matter naturally engendered from fire; and it is perhaps impossible that it should be so, since fire, like that which is alive, is in a perpetual state of fluxion, and seeks for food by which it may be nourished and kept in being; in conformity with the words of Aristotle,[352] that “Fire is only nourished, and is especially remarkable in this.” But what is nourished cannot itself be mingled with its nutriment. Whence it follows that it is impossible fire should be miscible. For mixture, according to Aristotle, is the union of altered miscibles, in which one thing is not transformed into another, but two things, severally active and passive, into a third thing. Generation, however, especially generation by metamorphosis, is the distribution of one similar thing having undergone change into several others. Nor are mixed similar bodies said to be generated from the elements, but to be constituted by them in some certain way, solvent forces residing in them at the same time.

These considerations, however, properly belong to the section of Physiology, which treats of the elements and temperaments, where it will be our business to speak of them more at large.

ON PARTURITION.

On generation follows parturition, that process, viz. by which the fœtus comes into the world and breathes the external air. I have, therefore, thought it well worth while, and within the scope of my design, to treat briefly of this subject. With Fabricius, then, I shall consider the causes, the manner, and the seasons of this process, as well as the circumstances which both precede and follow it. The circumstances which occur immediately previous to birth, and which, in women especially, indicate that the act of parturition is not far distant, are, on the one hand, such a preparation and arrangement on the part of the mother as may enable her to get rid of her offspring; and on the other, such a disposition of the fœtus as may best facilitate its expulsion.

With respect to the latter, viz. the position of the fœtus, Fabricius says,[353] “that it is disposed in a globular form and bent upon itself, in order that its extremities and prominent points generally may not injure the uterus and the containing membranes; another reason being that it may be packed in as small a space as possible.” For my own part, I cannot think that these are the reasons why the limbs of the fœtus are always kept in the same position. Swimming and moving about, as it does, in water, it extends itself in every direction, and so turns and twists itself that occasionally it becomes entangled in a marvellous manner in its own navel-string. The truth is, that all animals, whilst they are at rest or asleep, fold up their limbs in such a way as to form an oval or globular figure: so in like manner embryos, passing as they do the greater part of their time in sleep, dispose their limbs in the position in which they are formed, as being most natural and best adapted for their state of rest. So too the infant in utero is generally found disposed after this manner: the knees are drawn up towards the abdomen, the legs flexed, the feet crossed, and the hands directed to the head, one of them usually resting on the temples or ears, the other on the chin, in which situation white spots are discernible on the skin as the result of friction; the spine, moreover, is curved into a circle, and the neck being bowed, the head falls upon the knees. In such a position is the embryo usually found, as that which we naturally take in sleep; the head being situated superiorly, and the face usually turned towards the back of the mother. A short time, however, before birth the head is bent downwards towards the orifice of the uterus, and the fœtus, as it were, in search of an outlet, dives to the bottom. Thus Aristotle:[354] “All animals naturally come forth with the head foremost; but cross and foot presentations are unnatural.” This, however, does not hold universally; but as the position in utero varies, so too does the mode of exit; this may be observed in the case of dogs, swine, and other multiparous animals. The human fœtus even has not always the same position; and this is well known to pregnant women, who feel its movements in very different parts of the uterus, sometimes in the upper part, sometimes in the lower, or on either side.

In like manner the uterus, when the term of gestation is completed, descends lower (in the pelvis), the whole organ becomes softer, and its orifice patent. The “waters” also, as they are vulgarly called, “gather;” that is, a portion of the chorion, in which the watery matter is contained, gets in front of the fœtus, and falls from the uterus into the vagina; at the same time the neighbouring parts become relaxed and dilatable; in addition to which the cartilaginous attachments of the pelvic bones so lose their rigidity that the bones themselves yield readily to the passage of the fœtus, and thus greatly increase the area of the hypogastric region. When all these circumstances concur, it is quite clear that delivery is not far distant. Nature, in her provident care, contrives this dilatation of the parts in order that the fœtus may come into the world like the ripe fruit of a tree; just as she fills the breasts of the mother with milk that the being who is soon to enjoy an independent existence may have whereon to subsist. These, then, are the circumstances which immediately precede birth; and thus it happens that the presence of milk has especially been regarded as a sign of approaching delivery—milk, I mean, of a character suitable for the sustenance of the offspring; and this, according to Aristotle,[355] is only visible at the period of birth; it is therefore never observed before the seventh month of pregnancy.

Fabricius[356] maintains that on the subject of parturition there were two special heads of inquiry, viz. the time at which and the manner in which the process took place. Under the first of these heads he considers the term of utero-gestation; under the second, the way in which the fœtus comes into the world.

Aristotle[357] thought that the term of utero-gestation varied much. “There is,” he says, “a certain definite term to each animal, determined in the majority of cases by the animal’s duration of life; for it follows of necessity that a longer period is required for the production of the longer-lived animals.” He attributes, however, the chief cause to the size of the animal; “for it is scarcely possible,” he continues, “that the vast frames of animals or of aught else can be brought to perfection in a short period of time. Hence it is that in the case of mares and animals of cognate species, though their duration of life is small, their term of utero-gestation is considerable; and thus the elephant carries its young for the space of two years, the reason being its enormous size, for each animal has a definite magnitude, beyond which it cannot pass.” I would add, that the material of which each is formed has also its fixed limit in point of quantity. He says, moreover, “There is good reason why animals should have the periods of gestation, generation, and duration of life in certain cycles—I mean by cycle, a day, night, month, and year, and the time which is described by these; also the motions of the moon—for these are the common origin of generation to all. For it is in accordance with reason that the cycles of inferior things should follow those of the higher.” Nature, then, has decreed that the birth and death of animals should have their period and limit after this manner.

Just as the birth of animals depends on the course of the sun and moon, so have they various seasons for copulation and different terms of utero-gestation, these last being longer or shorter according to circumstances. “In the human species alone,” says the philosopher in the same part of his works, “is the period of utero-gestation subject to great irregularity. In other animals there is one fixed time, but in man several; for the human fœtus is expelled both in the seventh and tenth months, and at any period of pregnancy between these; moreover, when the birth takes place in the eighth month, it is possible for the infant to live.” In the majority of animals there is a distinct season for bringing forth their young; this is generally found to be in the spring, when the sun returns, but in many species it is in the summer, and in some in the autumn, as is the case with the cartilaginous fishes. Hence it is that animals, as the time of labour approaches, seek their accustomed haunts, and provide a safe and comfortable shelter where they may bring forth and rear their young. Hence, too, the title “bird-winds,” applied to those gales which prevail toward the beginning of spring, the word owing its origin to the fact of certain birds at that period of the year availing themselves of these winds to accomplish their migrations. In like manner stated seasons are observed by those fishes which congregate in myriads in certain places for the purpose of rearing their young. Moreover, in the spring, as soon as caterpillars fall under our notice (their ova, as may be observed by the way, like to invisible atoms, being for the most part carried by the winds, and not owing their origin, as commonly supposed, to spontaneous generation, or to be looked upon as the result of putrefaction), straightway the trees put forth their buds, soon to be devoured by these creatures; and these in their turn fall victims to birds innumerable, and are carried to the nest as food for the young brood. So constantly does this hold, that whenever strange species of caterpillars fall under notice, at the same time we are sure to see some rare and foreign birds, as if the latter had chased the former from some remote corner of the earth. Now in both of these classes of creatures the time for bringing forth their young is the same. Physicians, too, when these phenomena occur, are enabled to predict the approach of sundry strange diseases. Bees bring forth in the month of May, when honey abounds; wasps in the summer, when the fruit is ripe; and this is analogous to what takes place in viviparous animals, who produce their young at the period when their milk is best adapted for their offspring. But other animals of the non-migratory classes, in the same way, at stated seasons seek a place to deposit their young as they do a store of food. And thus it results that the countryman is able to decide what are the proper seasons for ploughing, sowing, and getting in his harvest, forming his opinion chiefly from the approach of flocks of birds, and especially of the seminivora. There are, however, some animals in whom there is no fixed time for production, and this is chiefly the case with those which are called domestic, and live with the human species. These both copulate and produce their young at uncertain seasons, and the reason probably is to be sought for in the larger quantity of food they consume, and the consequent inordinate salacity. But in these, as in the human species, the process of parturition is often difficult and dangerous.

There are other animals also on whom the course of the moon has influence, and which consequently copulate and bring forth their young at certain periods of the year—rabbits, mice, and the human female may be instanced. “For the moon,” observes Plutarch,[358] “when half full, is represented as greatly efficacious in shortening the pains of labour, and this she effects by moderating and relaxing the humours—hence, I think, those surnames of Diana are derived, Locheia, i. e. the tutelar deity of childbirth, and Eilytheia, otherwise Lucina; for Diana and the moon are synonymous.”

“In all other animals,” says Pliny,[359] “there are stated seasons and periods for production and utero-gestation; in man alone are they undetermined.” And this is, to a great extent, true; for in his case, although nature has laid down for the most part certain boundaries, yet there is sometimes a vast difference in individuals, and instances are recorded of women bringing forth viable children, some in the seventh, and others in the fourteenth month. Further, although Aristotle[360] asserts “that the majority of eight months’ children in Greece die,” he still admits “that they survive in Egypt and in some other countries, where the women have easy labours;” and although he says “that children born before the seventh month can under no circumstances survive, and that the seventh month is the first in which anything like maturity exists, and that the feebleness of children born even then is such as to make it necessary to wrap them in wool,” he still allows “that these are viable.” Franciscus Valesius tells us of a girl in his time, who, although a five months’ child, had arrived at the age of twelve years. Adrianus Spigelius[361] also records the case of a certain courier, “who proved to the satisfaction of all, on the public testimony of the city of Middleburgh, that he was born at the commencement of the sixth month, and that his frame was so slight and fragile that his mother found it necessary to wrap him up in cotton until such times as he was able to bear the ordinary dress of infants.” Avicenna[362] also states that a sixth months’ child is very capable of surviving. In like manner it is proved, both by ancient and modern authorities, that children may live who are born after the completion of the eleventh month. “We are told,” says Pliny,[363] “by Massurius, that when his inheritance was claimed by the next heir, Lucius Papyrius the prætor gave the decision against the claimant, although, by his mother’s account, Massurius was a thirteen months’ child—the ground of the judgment being that the term of utero-gestation had not been as yet accurately determined. There was indeed, not so long since, a woman in our own country who carried her child more than sixteen months, during ten of which she distinctly felt the movements of the fœtus, as indeed did others, and at last brought forth a living infant. These are rare contingencies, I will allow; and therefore it is hardly fair of Spigelius to blame Ulpianus the lawyer because he regarded as legitimate no child born after the completion of the tenth month. Both laws and precepts of art, we must remember, have reference to the general rules of vital processes. Besides, it is impossible to deny that many women, either for purposes of gain or from fear of punishment, have simulated pregnancy, and not hesitated to swear to the truth of their assertion:—others again have frequently been deceived, and fancied themselves pregnant, whilst the uterus has contained no product of conception. On this point Aristotle’s[364] words may be quoted: “The exact period at which conception takes place in the case of those born after the eleventh month can scarcely be ascertained. Women themselves do not know the time at which they conceive; for the uterus is often affected by flatulent disorders, and if under these circumstances conception takes place, women imagine this flatulency to mark the period of conception, because they have recognized certain symptoms which accompany actual conception.”

In the case of other women in whom the fœtus has died in the third or fourth month, then putrefied, and come away in the form of fetid lochial discharges, we have known superfœtation to take place; and yet these same women have persisted that they have brought forth their children after the completion of the fourteenth month. “It happens sometimes,” says Aristotle,[365] “that an abortion takes place, and ten or twelve products of superfœtation come away. But if the (second) conception takes place soon after (the first), the woman goes to the full time with the second, and brings forth both as twins. This was said to have been the case in the fable of Iphicles and Hercules. And it is a subject which admits of proof; for it is known of a woman that she brought forth one child resembling her husband, and another like a man with whom she had had adulterous intercourse. Another woman became pregnant of twins, and conceived another by superfœtation. Her labour came on, and she brought forth the twins well formed and at their proper time, whilst the third child was at the fifth month, and so died immediately.”

A certain maid-servant being gotten with child by her master, to conceal her disgrace, fled to London in the month of September; here she was delivered, and returned home with her health restored. In December, however, the birth of another child, conceived by superfœtation, proclaimed to the world the fault she had committed. “It happened to another woman,” adds the philosopher, “to be delivered of a seven months’ child, and afterwards of twins at the full term, the single child dying, the twins surviving. Other women also, having become pregnant of twins, have miscarried of one, and borne the other to the full term.” It is very easy to understand how, if the earlier or later product of superfœtation come away after three or four months have elapsed, that mistakes may be made in calculating the subsequent months, especially by credulous and ignorant women. We have sometimes observed, both in women and other animals, the product of conception perish, and come away gradually in the form of a thin fluid, somewhat resembling fluor albus. Not long since a woman in London, after an abortion of this kind, conceived anew, and brought forth a child at the proper period. Subsequently, however, after a lapse of some months, as she was engaged in her ordinary duties, without any pain or uneasiness, there came away piecemeal some dark bones belonging to the fœtus of which she had formerly miscarried. I was able to recognize in some of the fragments portions of the spine, femur, and other bones.

I am acquainted with a young woman, the daughter of a physician with whom I am very intimate, who experienced in her own person all the usual symptoms of pregnancy; after the fourteenth week, being healthy and sprightly, she felt the movements of the child within the uterus, calculated the time at which she expected her delivery, and when she thought, from further indications, that this was at hand, prepared the bed, cradle, and all other matters ready for the event. But all was in vain. Lucina refused to answer her prayers; the motions of the fœtus ceased; and by degrees, without inconvenience, as the abdomen had increased so it diminished; she remained, however, barren ever after. I am acquainted also with a noble lady who had borne more than ten children, and in whom the catamenia never disappeared except as the result of impregnation. Afterwards, however, being married to a second husband, she considered herself pregnant, forming her judgment not only from the symptoms on which she usually relied, but also from the movements of the child, which were frequently felt both by herself and her sister, who occupied the same bed with her. No arguments of mine could divest her of this belief. The symptoms depended on flatulence and fat. Hence the best ascertained signs of pregnancy have sometimes deceived not only ignorant women, but experienced midwives, and even skilful and accurate physicians—so that as mistakes are liable to arise, not only from deception on the part of the women themselves, but also from the erroneous tokens of pregnancy, I should say that no rule is to be rashly laid down with respect to births taking place before the seventh or after the fourteenth month.

Unquestionably the ordinary term of utero-gestation is that which we believe was kept in the womb of his mother by our Saviour Christ, of men the most perfect; counting, viz. from the festival of the Annunciation, in the month of March, to the day of the blessed Nativity, which we celebrate in December. Prudent matrons, calculating after this rule, as long as they note the day of the month in which the catamenia usually appear, are rarely out of their reckoning; but after ten lunar months have elapsed, fall in labour, and reap the fruit of their womb the very day on which the catamenia would have appeared, had impregnation not taken place.

As regards the causes of labour, Fabricius, besides that of Galen[366] (who held “that the fœtus was retained in utero until it was sufficiently grown and nourished to take food by the mouth,” according to which theory weakly children ought to remain in utero longer than others, which they do not), gives another and a better reason, viz. “the necessity the fœtus feels for more perfectly cooling itself by respiration, since the child breathes immediately on birth, but does not take food by the mouth. This is not only the case,” he continues, “in man and quadrupeds, but has been particularly observed in birds: these, small as they are, and furnished as yet with but tender bills, peck through the egg-shell at the point where they have need of respiration; and they do this rather through want of breath than of food, since the instant they quit the shell the function of respiration begins, whilst they remain without eating for two days, or longer.” This point, however, whether the object of respiration be really to “cool” the animal, shall be discussed elsewhere at greater length.

In the mean time I would propose this question to the learned—How does it happen that the fœtus continues in its mother’s womb after the seventh month? seeing that when expelled after this epoch, not only does it breathe, but without respiration cannot survive one little hour; whilst, as I before stated, if it remain in utero, it lives in health and vigour more than two months longer without the aid of respiration at all. To state my meaning more plainly—how is it that if the fœtus is expelled with the membranes unbroken, it can survive some hours without risk of suffocation; whilst the same fœtus, removed from its membranes, if air has once entered the lungs, cannot afterwards live a moment without it, but dies instantly? Surely this cannot be from want of “cooling,” for in difficult labours it often happens that the fœtus is retained in the passages many hours without the possibility of breathing, yet is found to be alive; when, however, it is once born and has breathed, if you deprive it of air it dies at once. In like manner children have been removed alive from the uterus by the Cæsarean section many hours after the death of the mother; buried as they are within the membranes, they have no need of air; but as soon as they have once breathed, although they be returned immediately within the membranes, they perish if deprived of it. If any one will carefully attend to these circumstances, and consider a little more closely the nature of air, he will, I think, allow that air is given neither for the “cooling” nor the nutrition of animals; for it is an established fact, that if the fœtus has once respired, it may be more quickly suffocated than if it had been entirely excluded from the air: it is as if heat were rather enkindled within the fœtus than repressed by the influence of the air.

Thus much, by the way, on the subject of respiration; hereafter, perhaps, I may treat of it at greater length. As the arguments on either side are very equally balanced, it is a question of the greatest difficulty.

To return to parturition. Besides the reasons alluded to above, viz. “the necessity for respiration and the want of nourishment,” Fabricius gives another; he says, “that the weight of the fœtus becomes so great as to exert considerable pressure, and the bulk such that the uterus is unable to retain it, added to which the quantity of excrementitious matter is so much increased that it cannot be contained by the membranes.”[367]

Now it has been shown above that the uterine humours are not excrementitious. Nor do the weight and bulk of the fœtus help us to a more probable explanation; for the fœtus suspended in water weighs but slightly on the placenta or uterus; besides which some nine months’ children are very small, much less in fact than many fœtuses of eight months, nevertheless they do not abide longer in the womb. And as to weight, any twins of eight months are far heavier than a single nine months’ child; yet they are not expelled before nine months are completed. Nor do we find a better reason in “want of nutriment;” twins, and even more children, are abundantly supplied with support up to the full term; and the milk which after delivery is sufficient for the nourishment of the child, could equally well, if transferred to the uterus, nourish the fœtus there.

I should rather attribute the birth of the child to the following reason—that the juices within the amnion, hitherto admirably adapted for nutriment, at that particular period either fail or become contaminated by excrementitious matter. I have touched on this subject before. The variation in the term of utero-gestation, occurring as it does chiefly in the human species, I believe to depend on the habits of life, feebleness of body, and on the various affections of the mind. And thus in the case of domesticated animals, owing to their indolence and overfeeding, the seasons both of copulation and production are less fixed and certain than in the wilder tribes. So women in robust health usually experience easy and rapid labours; the contrary holding good in those whose constitutions are shattered by disease. For the same thing befalls them that happens to plants, the seeds and fruits of which come later and less frequently to perfection in cold climates than in those where the soil is good and the sun powerful. Thus oranges in this country usually remain on the tree two years before they arrive at maturity; and figs, which in Italy ripen two or three times annually, scarcely come to perfection in our climate:—the same thing happens to the fruit of the womb; it depends on the abundance or deficiency of nutriment, on the strength or weakness of body, and on the right or wrong ordering of life with reference to what physicians call the “non-naturals,” whether the child arrives sooner or later at maturity, i. e. is born.

Fabricius describes the manner of parturition as follows: “The uterus having been so enlarged by the bulk of the fœtus that it will admit of no further distension without risk, and thus excited to expulsion, is drawn into itself by the action of the transverse fibres, and diminishes its cavity. Thus whilst previously neither the excrementitious matters from their quantity, nor the fœtus from its bulk, could be contained within it, the uterus, contracted and compressed as it is now, becomes still less able to retain them. Wherefore, first of all, the membranes, as being the weaker parts, and suffering most pressure, are ruptured, and give exit to the waters, which are of a very fluid consistence, for the purpose of lubricating the passages. Then follows the fœtus, which tends towards, and, as it were, assaults the uterine aperture, not only by the force of its own gravity as no longer floating in water, but compressed and propelled by the action of the uterus: the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm also assist mightily in the entire process.”

Now in these words Fabricius rather describes the process of defæcation or an abortion than a genuine and natural birth. For although in women, as a general rule, the membranes are ruptured before the escape of the fœtus, it is not universally so; nor does it hold in the case of other animals which bring forth their young enveloped in their membranes. This can be observed in the bitch, ewe, mare, and others, and more particularly in the viper, which conceives an ovum of an uniform colour and soft shell (resembling in fact the product of conception in the woman); this is retained until the fœtus is completely formed; it is then expelled entire, and, according to Aristotle,[368] is broken through by the young animal on the third day. It sometimes happens, however, that kittens, whilst yet in utero, gnaw through the membranes, and so come into the world uninvolved.

And so also, according to the observation of experienced midwives, women have occasionally expelled the child with the membranes unbroken. And this kind of birth, in which the fœtus is born enveloped in its coverings, appears to me by far the most natural; it is like the ripe fruit which drops from the tree without scattering its seed before the appointed time. But where it is otherwise, and the placenta, subsequently to birth, adheres to the uterus, there is great difficulty in detaching it, grave symptoms arise, fetid discharges, and sometimes gangrene occur, and the mother is brought into imminent peril.

Since then the process of parturition, as described by Fabricius, does not apply to all animals, but to women alone, and this not universally, but only where the labour is premature, and, as it were, forced, we must regard it not so much as a description of a natural as of a preternatural and hurried delivery, in fact, of an abortion.

In natural and genuine labour two things are required, which mutually bear upon and assist each other: these are, the mother which produces, and the child to be produced; and unless both are ready to play their part, the labour will hardly terminate favorably, requiring as it does the proper maturity of both. For if, on the one hand, the fœtus, from restlessness and over-desire to make its way out, does violence to the uterus, and thus anticipates the mother; or if, on the contrary, the mother, owing to feebleness of the uterus, or any other circumstance necessitating expulsion, is beforehand with the fœtus, this is to be looked upon rather as the result of disease than as a natural and critical birth. The same may be said of those cases where parts only of the product of conception escape, whilst others remain; for instance, if the fœtus itself is disposed to come away when the placenta is not yet separated from the uterus, or, on the other hand, if the placenta is separated when the fœtus is not rightly placed, or the uterus is not sufficiently relaxed to allow of its passage. Hence it is that midwives are so much to blame, especially the younger and more meddlesome ones, who make a marvellous pother when they hear the woman cry out with her pains and implore assistance, daubing their hands with oil, and distending the passages, so as not to appear ignorant in their art—giving besides medicines to excite the expulsive powers, and when they would hurry the labour, retarding it and making it unnatural, by leaving behind portions of the membranes, or even of the placenta itself, besides exposing the wretched woman to the air, wearying her out on the labour-stool, and making her, in fact, run great risks of her life. In truth, it is far better with the poor, and those who become pregnant by mischance, and are secretly delivered without the aid of a midwife; for the longer the birth is retarded the more safely and easily is the process completed.

Of unnatural labours, therefore, there are chiefly two kinds: either the fœtus is born before the proper time (and this constitutes an abortion), or else subsequently to it, when a difficult or tedious labour is the result, either from the due time and order not being preserved, or from the presence of dangerous symptoms; these arise either from failure of the expelling powers on the part of the mother, or from sluggishness on the part of the fœtus in making its way out; it is when both perform their proper parts that a safe and genuine labour results.

Fabricius ascribes the business of expelling the offspring to the uterus; and he adds, “the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm assist in the business.” It seems to me, however, on deep investigation, that the throes of childbirth, just as sneezing, proceed from the motion and agitation of the whole body. I am acquainted with a young woman who during labour fell into so profound a state of coma that no remedies had power to rouse her, nor was she in fact able to swallow. When called to her, finding that injections and other ordinary remedies had been employed in vain, I dipped a feather in a powerful sternutatory, and passed it up the nostrils. Although the stupor was so profound that she could not sneeze, or be roused in any way, the effect was to excite convulsions throughout the body, beginning at the shoulders, and gradually descending to the lower extremities. As often as I employed the stimulus the labour advanced, until at last a strong and healthy child was born, without the consciousness of the mother, who still remained in a state of coma.

We can observe the manner of labour-pains in other animals, as the bitch, sheep, and larger cattle, and ascertain that they do not depend on the action of the uterus and abdomen only, but on the efforts of the whole body.

The degree in which the offspring contributes to accelerate and facilitate birth is made clear from observations on oviparous animals; in these it is ascertained that the shell is broken through by the fœtus and not by the mother. Hence it is probable that in viviparous animals also the greater part of delivery is due to the fœtus—to its efforts, I mean, not to its gravity, as Fabricius would have it. For what can gravity do in the case of quadrupeds standing or sitting, or in the woman when lying down? Nor are the efforts of the fœtus to get out, the result, as he believes, of its own bulk or of that of the waters; the waters, it is true, when the fœtus is dead and decomposed, by their putrid and acrimonious nature, stimulate the uterus to expel its contents; but it is the fœtus itself which, with its head downwards, attacks the portals of the womb, opens them by its own energies, and thus struggles into day. Wherefore a birth of this kind is held the more speedy and fortunate; “it is contrary to nature,” says Pliny,[369] “for a child to be born with the feet foremost; hence those so born were called Agrippæ, i. e. born with difficulty”—(ægre parti), for in such the labour is tedious and painful. Notwithstanding this, in cases of abortion, or where the fœtus is dead, or, in fact, when any difficulty arises in the delivery so as to require manual aid, it is better that the feet should come first; they act as a wedge on the narrow uterine passages. Hence, when we chiefly depend upon the fœtus, as being lively and active, to accomplish delivery, we must do our best that the head escape first; but if the business is to be done by the uterus, it is advisable that the feet come foremost.

We are able to observe in how great a degree the fœtus contributes to delivery, not only in birds, which, as I have said above, break through the shell by their own powers, but also in many other animals. All kinds of flies and butterflies pierce the little membrane in which they lie concealed as “aureliæ;” the silkworm also, at its appointed time, softens by moistening, and then eats through the silken bag which it had spun round itself for protection, and makes its way out without any foreign aid. In the same manner wasps, hornets, all insects in fact, and fishes of every kind, are born by their own will and powers. This can be best seen in the skate, fork-fish, lamprey, and the cartilaginous fishes generally. These conceive a perfect two-coloured egg, made up, that is, of albumen and yelk, and contained in a strong quadrangular shell; from this, still retained within the uterus, the young fish is formed: it then breaks through the shell, and makes its way out. In an exactly similar manner the young viper eats through the egg-shell, sometimes whilst it remains in utero, sometimes when within the passages, at others two or three days after birth. Hence arose the fable of the young viper eating through the womb of its mother, and so avenging its father’s death; it does, in fact, nothing but what the young of every animal does, breaking though the membranes which envelope it, either in the delivery itself, or a short time subsequently to that event.

We learn moreover from positive observations how much the fœtus contributes to its own birth. A woman in my own neighbourhood, and I speak as having knowledge of the circumstance, died one evening, and the body was left by itself in a room; the next morning an infant was found between the thighs of the mother, having evidently forced its way out by its own efforts. Gregorius Nymmanus has collected several instances of a similar kind from trustworthy authors.

I am further acquainted with a woman who had the whole length of the vagina so torn and injured in a difficult labour, that subsequently, after she had again become pregnant, not only did the parts in the neighbourhood of the nymphæ, but the whole cavity of the vagina as far as the orifice of the uterus, become adherent; this went to such an extent that coition became impossible, nor could a probe be passed up, nor was there any passage left for the ordinary discharges. When her labour came on her sufferings were so dreadful that all hope of delivery was abandoned. She therefore gave up the keys to her husband, arranged her affairs, and took leave of her friends who were present. On a sudden, however, by the violent efforts of the fœtus the whole space was burst through, and a vigorous infant born; thus was the fœtus the salvation both of itself and its mother, besides opening the way for subsequent children. By the exhibition of proper remedies the mother recovered her former good state of health.

The following instance is even more remarkable. A white mare of great beauty had been presented to her Serene Highness the Queen, and in order that its symmetry and usefulness might not be impaired by foal-bearing, the grooms, as is the custom, had infibulated the animal with iron rings. This mare (by what chance I know not, nor could the grooms inform me) was got with foal; and at length, when no one suspected anything of the kind, she foaled in the night, and a living foal was found the next morning by the mother’s side. When I heard of the circumstance I went immediately to the place, and found the sides of the vulva still fastened together by the rings, but the whole pudendum on the left side so thrust and torn away from the pelvis by the almost incredible efforts of the fœtus, that a gap sufficiently wide was made to admit of its escape. Such is the force and vigour of a full-grown and healthy fœtus.

But, on the contrary, if the fœtus is diseased or feeble, or is bom before the full term, it must be considered more an abortion than a regular birth, the fœtus being expelled rather than born; and thus for some days after birth it neither properly takes the breast nor gets rid of its excretions.

And yet the following example will show that the uterus also contributes towards delivery. A poor washerwoman had long suffered from procidentia uteri to such an extent that a tumour hung between the thighs as large as the fist. As no remedies had been applied, the prolapsed part became so rough and wrinkled as to take on the appearance of the scrotum, and in this state she suffered less than at the commencement of her illness. When consulted on her case, I ordered her to keep her bed for several days, to employ fomentations and ointments, and after the uterus was returned, to keep it in its place by means of pessaries and bandages, until by the use of strengthening applications it should be fixed firmly in its place. This plan was followed by some success; but she soon suffered a relapse, when compelled by her circumstances to follow her usual occupations, and continue long in the erect position. She bore, however, her inconvenience with patience, the uterus at times protruding, at others not doing so. At night she could usually reduce it, and it remained for some time in its proper place. After the lapse of a few days she returned, and complained that the uterus was so swelled from the use, as she thought, of the remedies, and especially of the fomentations, that it could not any longer be retained. By using some applications she was enabled to accomplish the reduction; but the cure was only temporary, for as soon as she stood up, and followed her ordinary occupations, the uterus immediately gave her much inconvenience by its weight, and at length entirely prolapsed. And now it hung down to the middle of the thigh, like the scrotum of a bull, to such an extent that I suspected not only the vagina but also the uterus to be inverted, or that there was some kind of uterine hernia. At length the tumour exceeded in magnitude a man’s head, acquired a resisting character, and hung down as low as the knees; it also gave her much pain, and prevented her walking except in the prone position; added to which it discharged a sanious fluid from its inferior part, as if some portion had ulcerated. On ocular inspection (for I did not employ the touch) I feared that cancer or carcinoma might result, and so thought of the ligature or excision; in the mean time I advised the employment of soothing fomentations to ease the pain. The following night, however, a fœtus of a span long, perfectly formed, but dead, was expelled from the tumour, and was brought to me the next day. I took out the intestines, and kept it in cold water without decomposition for many months, showing it to my friends as an extraordinary object of curiosity. The proper skin in this fœtus was not yet formed, but in its place there was a pellicle, which could be stripped off entire, like that on a baked apple; underneath all the muscles of the body could be distinctly seen, the fœtus being very lean. I shall describe at another opportunity what I discovered in this fœtus on dissection. I have mentioned the case on this occasion to show that it was the uterus alone which excited the abortion, and expelled the fœtus by its own efforts.

Fabricius[370] suggests two circumstances as especially worthy of admiration in and after birth: first, the dilatation of the uterus at the time of birth; secondly, the way in which after birth it is restored to its usual small size. He wonders how the uterus can be so distended as to allow the fœtus to escape, and afterwards in so short a period return to its pristine state.

He says, “that with Galen[371] we can only wonder, but not understand,” how the neck of the uterus, a part so thick, hard, and closely sealed, as not to admit a probe, can suffer such distension at the time of deliver”. He gives,[372] however, the following reason: “that the unimpregnated uterus is of a thick and hard consistence, and so is its orifice, but when impregnated is yielding and soft, and in proportion as the term of delivery approaches, both the body of the uterus and its orifice become more and more yielding.” He believes this to arise “from the distension which the uterus undergoes, and that when this distension takes place, the compact and plaited, so to speak, body of the uterus is expanded and unfolded; thus what was before thick and hard becomes soft and yielding, and ready to admit of the passage of the fœtus.” He adds subsequently, “Some one may ask—if all this is correct, how is it that in pregnant animals the uterine aperture is so closed that it will not admit a probe? I answer, that this is so because the uterus, whilst it is being distended and undone, like a closely-folded piece of linen, begins to undergo these changes at its superior part; the lower portions then gradually widen, until the power of distension arrives at the aperture; this generally takes place at the period of birth. With reason then is the uterine orifice closely shut in the first months of pregnancy, whilst it is still hard and thick, but inclined to dilate in the latter ones. Thus much may be said about the unknown cause of Galen. Other circumstances may be mentioned as conducing to the dilatation of the orifice; for instance, the excretions of the fœtus, such as the sweat and urine; for although these are contained in their proper receptacles and membranes, yet some degree of moisture may be communicated to the uterine aperture, especially as it lies low, and always in the immediate neighbourhood of these humours; added to which, mucous and slimy matters are always found about the orifice.” But in my opinion this great man is wrong; for the neck of the uterus is not hard from being folded on itself, but in consequence of its own proper substance and cartilaginous nature; and the accidental causes which he gives can have but little weight towards furthering the dilatation. This, doubtless, like every other contrivance in the human body, is owing to the divine providence of Nature, which directs her workmanship to certain ends, actions, and uses. The structure, then, of the uterus is such, that immediately on conception it shuts up closely its cartilaginous aperture, for the purpose of retaining the seed; this part subsequently, at birth, and that the fœtus may escape, like fruit on the tree, comes to maturity and softens, and this not by any unfolding of its tissue, but by a change in its natural character. For a loosening and softening takes place even in the commissural attachments of bones, as in those between the haunches and the sacrum, the pubes, and the pieces of the coccyx. It is a truly wonderful thing that the little point of a sprouting germ, say of the almond or another fruit, should break the shell which a hammer can scarcely crush; or that the tender fibres of the ivy-root should penetrate the narrow chinks of the stone, and at length cause rents in mighty walls. But it does not appear so marvellous that the parts of the woman, when distended by labour, should recover their natural firmness, if we consider the state of the male organ in coition, and how soon it subsequently becomes soft and flaccid. A greater matter for wonder is it, and surpassing all these “foldings,” that the substance of the uterus, as the fœtus increases, not only is day by day enlarged and distended or unfolded, as it were, to take Fabricius’s notion, but that it should become more thick, fleshy, and strong. We may even, with Fabricius, marvel still more at the means by which the mass of the uterus, by the intervention of the ordinary lochial discharges, returns to its original size in so few days; for this is not the case with other tumours or abscesses; these require a longer period for dispersion, being made up of unnatural matters, and such as require digestion, a process opposed to the power of expulsion. Yet this is not more worthy of admiration than the other works of nature, for “all things are full of God,” and the Deity of nature is ever visibly present.

In the last place, it is object of great wonder to Fabricius how those vessels of the fœtus (meaning the oval opening out of the vena cava into the pulmonary vein, and the duct from the pulmonary artery into the aorta, on which subjects I have entered fully in my Essay on the Circulation of the Blood) immediately after birth begin to shrivel up and become obliterated. He is driven to that reason given by Aristotle,[373] and already cited by me, which is, that all parts are made for a certain function, and if the function ceases to be required that they themselves disappear. The eye sees, the ear hears, the brain perceives, the stomach digests, not because such characters and structures (naturally) belong to these organs; but they are endowed with such characters and structures to accomplish the functions appointed them by nature.

On grounds like these it would appear that the uterus holds the first place among the organs destined for generation; for the testicles are made to produce semen, the semen is for the purposes of intercourse, and coition itself, or the emission of the semen, is instituted by nature that the uterus may be fecundated and generation result.

I have said before that an egg is, as it were, the fruit of an animal, and a kind of external uterus. Now, on the other hand, we may regard the uterus as an egg remaining within. For as trees are gay with leaves, flowers, and fruit at stated periods, and oviparous animals at one time conceive and produce eggs, at another become effete, so that neither the “place” or the part that contained them can be found, so have viviparous animals their spring and autumn allotted them. At the season of fecundation the genital organs, especially in the female, undergo great changes, so much so that in birds, the ovary, which at other times is scarcely visible, now becomes turgid; and the belly of the fish, near about the time of spawning, far exceeds in bulk the rest of the body, owing to the enormous number of ova and the quantity of semen contained within it. In very many viviparous animals the genital organs, that is, the uterus and spermatic vessels, are not always found presenting the same mode and course of action and structure; but as they are capable or not of conception, so changes take place, and to such an extent that the organs can hardly be recognized as the same. In nature, just as there is nothing lacking, so is there nothing superfluous; and thus it happens that the organs of generation wither away and are lost when there is no longer any use for them.

At the period of coitus in the hare and mole, the testicles of the male become visible, and in the female the horns of the uterus appear. In truth, it is most marvellous to see what an enormous quantity of semen is contained in full-grown moles and mice at those times, whilst at others no semen can be seen, and the testicles are shrunk and retracted. So also when the reproductive faculty ceases in the female, the uterus is found with difficulty, and it is scarcely possible to distinguish the sexes.

The uterus, especially in the woman, varies extraordinarily as it is fecundated or not, both in constitution and in the results of that constitution—I mean in position, size, form, colour, thickness, hardness, and density. In the girl, before the age of puberty, the breasts are no larger than those of the boy, and the uterus is a small, white, membranous organ, destitute of vessels, and not larger than the top of the thumb, or a large bean. In like manner in old women, as the breasts are collapsed, so is the uterus shrunken, flaccid, withered, pale, and void of vessels and blood. I attribute the suppression of the catamenia in elderly women to this cause; in them the menstruous fluid either escapes as hemorrhoidal flux, or is prematurely stopped, to the injury of the health. For when the uterus becomes cold and almost lifeless, and all its vessels are obliterated, the superfluous blood boils up, and either falls back and stagnates, or else is diverted into the neighbouring veins. On the contrary, in those pale virgins who labour under chronic maladies, and in whom the uterus is small and the catamenia stagnate, “by coition,” says Aristotle,[374] “the excrementitious menstrual fluid is drawn downwards, for the heated uterus attracts the humours, and the passages are opened.” In this way their maladies are greatly lessened, seeing that want of action on the part of the uterus exposes the body to various ills. For the uterus is a most important organ, and brings the whole body to sympathize with it. No one of the least experience can be ignorant what grievous symptoms arise when the uterus either rises up or falls down, or is in any way put out of place, or is seized with spasm—how dreadful, then, are the mental aberrations, the delirium, the melancholy, the paroxysms of frenzy, as if the affected person were under the dominion of spells, and all arising from unnatural states of the uterus. How many incurable diseases also are brought on by unhealthy menstrual discharges, or from over-abstinence from sexual intercourse where the passions are strong!

Nor are the changes which take place in the virgin less observable when the uterus first begins to enlarge and receive warmth; the complexion is improved, the breasts enlarge, the countenance glows with beauty, the eyes lighten, the voice becomes harmonious; the gait, gestures, discourse, all are graceful. Serious maladies, too, are cured either at this period or never.

I am acquainted with a noble lady who for more than ten years laboured under furor uterinus and melancholy. After all remedies had been employed without success, she became affected with prolapsus uteri. Contrary to the opinion of others, I predicted that this last accident would prove salutary, and I recommended her not to replace the uterus until its over-heat had been moderated by the contact of the external air. Circumstances turned out as I anticipated, and in a short time she became quite well; the uterus was returned to its proper situation, and she lives in good health to the present day.

I also saw another woman who suffered long with hysterical symptoms, which would yield to no remedies. After many years her health was restored on the uterus becoming prolapsed. In both cases, when the violence of the symptoms was abated, I returned the uterus, and the event proved favorable. For the uterus, when stimulated by any acrid matter, not only falls down, but like the rectum irritated by a tenesmus, thrusts itself outwards.

Various, then, is the constitution of the uterus, and not only in its diseased, but also in its natural state, that is, at the periods of fecundity and barrenness. In young girls, as I said, and in women past childbearing, it is without blood, and about the size of a bean. In the marriageable virgin it has the magnitude and form of a pear. In women who have borne children, and are still fruitful, it equals in bulk a small gourd or a goose’s egg; at the same time, together with the breasts, it swells and softens, becomes more fleshy, and its heat is increased; whilst, to use Virgil’s expression with reference to the fields,

“Superat tener omnibus humor,
Et genitalia semina poscunt.”

Wherefore women are most prone to conceive either just before or just subsequent to the menstrual flux, for at these periods there is a greater degree of heat and moisture, two conditions necessary to generation. In the same manner when other animals are in heat, the genital organs are moist and turgid.

Such is the state of the uterus as I have found it before birth. In pregnant women, as I have before stated, the uterus increases in proportion to the fœtus, and attains a great size. Immediately after birth, I have seen it as large as a man’s head, more than a thumb’s breadth in thickness, and loaded with vessels full of blood. It is, indeed, most wonderful, and, as Fabricius remarks, quite beyond human reason, how such a mass can diminish to so vast an extent in the space of fifteen or twenty days. It happens as follows: immediately on the expulsion of the fœtus and its membranes, the uterus gradually contracts, narrows its neck, and shrinks inwardly into itself; partly by a process of diaphoresis, partly by means of the lochia, its bulk insensibly lessens; and the neighbouring parts, bones, abdomen, and all the hypogastric region, at the same time diminish and recover their firmness. The lochial discharge at first resembles pure blood; it then becomes of a sanious character, like the washings of flesh, and is otherwise pale and serous. At this last stage, when no longer tinged with blood, the women call it “the coming of the milk,” for the reason probably that at that time the breasts are loaded with milk, and the lochia sensibly diminish; as if the nutritive matter was then transferred to the breasts from the uterus.

In other animals the process is shorter and simpler; in them the parts concerned recover their ordinary bulk and consistence in one or two days. In fact, some, as the hare and rabbit, admit the buck, and again become fecundated, an hour after kindling. In like manner, I have stated that the hen admits the cock immediately on laying. Women, as they alone have a menstruous, so have they alone a lochial discharge; added to which they are exposed to disorders and perils immediately after birth, either from the uterus, through feebleness, contracting too soon, or from the lochia becoming vitiated or suppressed. For it often happens, especially in delicate women, that foul and putrid lochia set up fevers and other violent symptoms. Because the uterus, torn and injured by the separation of the placenta, especially if any violence has been used, resembles a vast internal ulcer, and is cleansed and purified by the free discharge of the lochia. Therefore do we conclude as to the favorable or unfavorable state of the puerperal woman from the character of these excretions. For if any part of the placenta adhere to the uterus, the lochial discharges become fetid, green, and putrid; and sometimes the powers of the uterus are so reduced that gangrene is the result, and the woman is destroyed.

If clots of blood, or any other foreign matter, remain in the uterine cavity after delivery, the uterus does not retract nor close its orifice; but the cervix is found soft and open. This I ascertained in a woman, who, when laboring under a malignant fever, with great prostration of strength, miscarried of a fœtus exhibiting no marks of decomposition, and who afterwards lay in an apparently dying state, with a pulse scarcely to be counted, and cold sweats. Finding the uterine orifice soft and open, and the lochia very offensive, I suspected that something was undergoing decomposition within; whereupon I introduced the fingers and brought away a “mole” of the size of a goose’s egg, of a hard, fleshy, and almost cartilaginous consistence, and pierced with holes, which discharged a thick and fetid matter. The woman was immediately freed from her symptoms, and in a short time recovered.

When the neck of the uterus contracts in a moderate degree after birth, and certain pains, called by the midwives “after pains,” ensue, in consequence of the difficulty with which the clots are expelled, the case is considered a favorable one, and is so in fact; for it indicates vigour on the part of the uterus, and that it is inclined readily to contract to its usual bulk; the result of which is that the lochia are duly expelled, and health restored to the woman.

But I have observed in some women the uterine orifice so closed immediately after parturition, that the blood has been retained in the uterus, and then, becoming putrid, has induced the most dangerous symptoms; and when art did not avail to promote its exit, the woman has presently died.

A noble lady in childbed being attacked with fever for want of the ordinary lochial discharge, had the pudenda swollen and hot; finding the uterine orifice hard and firmly closed, I forcibly dilated the part by means of an iron instrument sufficiently to admit of my introducing a syringe and throwing up an injection; the effect of which was that grumous and fetid blood, to the amount of several pounds, flowed away, with present relief of the symptoms.

The wife of a doctor of divinity was brought to me; a lady of a very tolerable constitution, but who was barren, and having an extreme desire for progeny, had tried all kinds of prescriptions in vain. In her the catamenia appeared at their proper period; but at times, especially after horse exercise, a bloody and purulent discharge came from the uterus, and then, in a short time, ceased suddenly. Some considered the case as one of leucorrhœa; others, led chiefly by the fact that the discharge was not continually present, and in small quantities, but appeared by intervals and in abundance, suspected a fistulous ulcer; whereupon they examined the whole vagina by means of a speculum uteri, and applied various remedies, but in vain; when I was at length called to her. I opened the uterine orifice, and immediately two spoonfuls of pus came away of a sanious character and tinged with streaks of blood. On seeing this I said that there was a hidden ulcer in the uterine cavity, and by applying suitable remedies I restored her to her former state of health. But during the time when I was engaged in her cure, when the ordinary remedies did not appear to be doing much good, I applied stronger ones, suspecting as I did that the ulcer was of long standing, and perhaps covered by exuberant granulations. I therefore added a little Roman vitriol to the injection employed previously, the effect of which was to make the uterus contract suddenly and become as hard as a stone; at the same time various hysterical symptoms showed themselves, such, I mean, as are generally supposed by physicians to arise from constriction of the uterus, and the rising of “foul vapours” therefrom. The symptoms continued some time, until by the application of soothing and anodyne remedies the uterus relaxed its orifice; upon which the acrid injection, together with a putrid sanies, was expelled, and in a short time the patient recovered.

I have introduced this account from my “medical observations” for the purpose of showing how acutely sensible the uterus is, and how readily it closes on the approach of danger, especially when urgent symptoms accompany the puerperal state. Women are peculiarly subject to these accidents, especially those among them who lead a luxurious life, or whose health is naturally weak, and who easily fall into disorders. Country women, and those accustomed to a life of labour, do not become dangerously ill on such small grounds. Some of them may be found pregnant a month after delivery; whilst two months frequently elapse before others are able to set about the ordinary occupations of life.

It is laid down by Hippocrates,[375] that as many days are required for the “after-purgings” as there are for the formation of the fœtus; therefore there are more for a female than a male child. “But this,” says Scaliger,[376] “is false; for in none of our women do “the cleansings” last more than a month; in very many they cease on the fifteenth day; in some even on the seventh day; and I have seen a case where they lasted only until the third day, although the woman had borne twins.” Galen has many observations on this subject in his work περὶ κυουμένων, (On the Formation of the Fœtus.) In the New World, it is said that the woman keeps apart the day only on which she is delivered, and then returns to her ordinary occupations.

I will add, in conclusion, an extraordinary instance told me by the noble Lord George Carew, Earl of Totness, and long Lord-Lieutenant of Munster in Ireland—he who wrote the history of these times. A woman, great with child, was following her husband, who served as a soldier, and it happened that the army, when on the march, was compelled to halt for the space of an hour near a small river which impeded their passage; whereupon the woman, who felt her labour at hand, retired to a neighbouring thicket, and there, without the aid of a midwife or any other preparation, gave birth to twins; after she had washed both herself and them in the running stream, she wrapped the infants in a coarse covering, tied them on her back, and the same day marched barefoot twelve miles with the army, without the slightest harm ensuing. The following day the Viceroy, Earl Mountjoy, who at that time was leading an army against Kinsale, then occupied by the Spaniards, and the Earl of Totness, were so affected by the strange incident, that they appeared at the font, and had the infants called by their own names.

ON
THE UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS.

OF THE
UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS.

“Four kinds of bodies” are enumerated by Hieronymus Fabricius[377] “as existing externally to the fœtus; these are the umbilical vessels, the membranes, the humours, and a fleshy substance.” On these subjects, guided by my observations, I shall briefly state wherein I differ from him; first, however, giving his statement in his own words.

“There are,” he says, “three membranes, two of which envelope the whole fœtus, but the third does not do so. Of those which envelope the whole fœtus, the innermost, immediately investing one, is called ἃμνιον, i. e. the mantle. That which follows next is entitled by the Greeks χόριον; the Latins, however, have not given it a name, although some interpreters have thought proper erroneously to call it “secundæ” or “secundina,” the secundines; this also envelopes the entire fœtus. The third is called ἀλλαντοειδὴς, i. e. gut-like, from its resemblance to a stuffed intestine; it does not entirely encompass the fœtus, but is applied upon the thorax and part of the abdomen, and extends to either horn of the uterus.” He allows that this last membrane is only found in the fœtus of the sheep and cow; he asserts also that it is continuous with the urachus, and by means of this receives the urine from the bladder. Hence, he goes on, “horned animals, in whom this allantois is found, have the urachus so wide and straight, that it resembles a small intestine; it gradually decreases in size until it reaches the fundus of the bladder; whence it would appear to owe its origin rather to the intestine than to the bladder itself. But in man and other animals furnished with incisors in both jaws, and in whom the allantois is wanting, the size of the urachus is so diminished, that although it rises from the fundus of the bladder as a single tube, it afterwards splits into innumerable fibres, which pass beyond the umbilicus together with the vessels, and carry the urine into the chorion, although the exact mode in which it does so cannot be demonstrated.” On this ground he accuses Arantius of a double error—first, his denial of the existence of the urachus in man; and, secondly, his assertion that the fœtus passes its urine through the genital organs.

For my own part, I must confess I am a willing party to the errors of Arantius, if errors they are to be called. For I am quite sure, if pressure be made on the bladder of a full-grown fœtus, whether of man or of any other animal, that urine will flow by the genitals. But I have never seen an urachus, nor observed that the urine is propelled into the membranes by making pressure on the bladder. I have indeed seen in the sheep and deer what appeared to be a process of bladder between the umbilical arteries, and which contained urine; but it in no way resembled the urachus as described by Fabricius. Not that I would obstinately deny the existence of an allantois; for the minor membranes are so delicate and transparent (those, for example, which we have described as existing between the two “whites” of the egg) that they may easily escape observation. Moreover, in the hen’s egg a white excrementitious matter, and even fæces are found between the colliquament and albumen, i. e. between the amnion and chorion; this I have mentioned before, and Coiterus has also observed it. Added to which, the membrane of the colliquament itself, in which the fœtus swims, although it is so exceedingly transparent and delicate that Fabricius himself allows nothing can be imagined more so, nevertheless (for according to him all membranes, however thin, are double) may nature sometimes find herself compelled to deposit urine or some other matter between its duplicatures. An allantois of this kind I am ready to allow Fabricius; but that other intestine-like body produced into either horn of the uterus, I do not discover among the membranes in cloven-footed animals, nor aught else, in fact, except the conception itself. I can only find, as I before said, a process of the bladder, situated between the umbilical arteries, which contains an excrementitious matter, and varies in length in different animals. Wherefore, in my opinion, the tunic which Fabricius calls the allantois is, in fact, the chorion; and the ancients applied the name of allantois to it on account of its resemblance to a double intestine. For that external membrane, constricted in the middle, and resembling a saddle-bag in form, which is stretched upwards to each horn of the uterus, and in its passage is pinched in by that part of the uterus which connects the horns, is in truth the chorion; and in the sheep, goat, roe, fallow-deer, and other cloven-footed animals, it can be raised by the hand in the middle of its course, and easily extracted whole; this is the same as what is called the “conception” or ovum. Like an egg, it contains within itself two fluids, and the fœtus with its appendages; it is possessed besides of those characters which Aristotle attributes to the egg; these are, that out of part of it the embryo is originally formed, and that the remainder constitutes the sustenance of the new animal, as has been frequently explained. I believe, then, the tunic which Fabricius called the allantois to be either the chorion or else some unnatural structure formed out of the reduplication of the membranes. It is accordingly only found to exist in some animals, and not always in these; it cannot be traced from the commencement of conception, and in some animals it is more apparent than in others: whilst in others nothing can be seen except a mere process of the bladder. Besides, Fabricius himself allows that its purpose is not to envelope the fœtus, but to contain its urine. In truth, I must think that he has described it rather to defend the doctrine of the ancients, than because he really believed he had discovered such a membrane, or that it served any good purpose. For he allows, with the ancients, and every medical school, that the chorion contains urine, when he says[378] that there are two humours encircling the fœtus, one, viz. in the amnion, consisting of sweat; the other in the chorion, consisting of urine. It is, therefore, clear that the ancients under the two names understood one and the same membrane; and that in the cloven-footed animals they called it “allantois,” on account of its form; but in others “chorion,” because they thought its object was to receive the urine. Wherefore they allow that this tunic is neither found in man nor any of the other animals. For what need can there be of another tunic to retain the urine, when they themselves admit that the office of doing so belongs especially to the chorion? There can be no probable reason assigned why this tunic should exist in the sheep, goat, and the other cloven-footed animals, and not also in the dog, cat, mouse, and others. For in truth, if the object of this membrane were to contain the urine, the fœtus of the sheep and cow must secrete a much larger quantity than those of animals furnished with incisors in both jaws; there must then either be three different humours, or at least two receptacles for the urine. For myself, I am sure that the chorion from the first is full of water. I will not, however, enter into controversies; I would rather record what I have found by my own observations.

To do as Fabricius has done, and give the structure of the full-grown and perfect embryo, is one thing, but it is another to enter fully on the subject of its generation and first formation: just as they are very different things to describe the ripe fruit of an apple or any other tree, and to explain the manner in which it is produced from the germ. I will, therefore, briefly go through the stages by which the “conception” is brought to maturity, in which way the true doctrines in the matter of the membranes and other fœtal appendages will be better ascertained.

In the production of all living creatures, as I have before said, this invariably holds, that they derive their origin from a certain primary something or primordium which contains within itself both the “matter” and the “efficient cause;” and so is, in fact, the matter out of which, and that by which, whatsoever is produced is made. Such a primary something in animals (whether they spring from parents, or arise spontaneously, or from putrefaction) is a moisture inclosed in some membrane or shell; a similar body, in fact, having life within itself either actually or potentially; and this, if it is generated within an animal and remain there, until it produce an “univocal” (not equivocal) animal, is commonly called a “conception;” but if it is exposed to the air by birth, or assumes its beginning under other circumstances, (than within an animal), it is then denominated an “egg,” or “worm.” I think, however, that in either case the word “primordium” should be used to express that from whence the animal is formed; just as plants owe their origin to seeds: all these “primordia” have one common property—that of vitality.

I find a “primordium” of this kind in the uterus of all viviparous animals before any trace of a fœtus appears: there is a clear, thick, white fluid (like the albumen of the egg) inclosed in a membrane, and this I call the ovum. In the roe, fallow-deer, sheep, and other cloven-footed animals, it fills the whole uterus and both its horns.

In process of time an extremely limpid and pure watery fluid (similar to that which in the hen’s egg I have called the colliquament) is secreted by this “primordium” or “ovum;” in clearness and brilliancy far exceeding the remaining fluid of the ovum in which it is contained. It is of a circular form, and inclosed in a very delicate and transparent membrane of its own called the “amnion.” The other fluid, of a denser and thicker character, is contained in the outer envelope, or chorion, which is in immediate contact with the concave surface of the uterus, and which also encompasses the entire ovum: the shape of this second membrane varies according to that of the uterus: in some animals it is oval, in others oblong, but in those with cloven feet it resembles a saddle-bag. After a short time a red pulsating point shows itself within the transparent substance, and from this point exceedingly fine twigs, or rather rays of vessels, start forth. By and by the first aggregated portion of the body makes its appearance, folded upon itself orbicularly, and somewhat resembling a grub: the remaining parts follow in the order described in our history. For I have ascertained that the production of the fœtus from their ova or “conceptions” in viviparous animals, takes place exactly in the same way as the growth of the chick within the egg.

As I before observed, “conceptions” in viviparous animals vary in form, number, and in their modes of attachment to the uterus. At first, especially in the cloven-footed animals, the “conception” does not adhere to the uterus, but is only in contact with, and fills and distends the organ, and can be easily extracted entire. In cloven-footed animals, which conceive within the horns of the uterus, and also in the solidungula, one ovum only of this kind is found, and that stretching up into either horn of the uterus: and although these animals sometimes produce one, sometimes two young at a birth, and so sometimes one, sometimes two colliquaments are found, one in the right, the other in the left horn of the uterus, yet the two are always contained in one and the same ovum.

In other animals, however, the number of ova answers to the number of fœtuses, and within them are as many colliquaments: this is the case in the dog, cat, mouse, and other animals of this kind with teeth in either jaw. In cloven-footed animals the ovum is shaped like a saddle-bag: the form, in fact, under which Fabricius represented the allantois. In the mare, the figure of the uterus internally resembles an oblong bag; in the woman it is of a globular form.

In animals in whom the “conception” adheres to the uterus, (and in very many it does not do so until the fœtus is fully formed), this takes place in various modes. In some it is adherent in one place by the intervention of a fleshy substance, which in the woman is called the “placenta,” from its resemblance to a round cake (placenta): in others it is attached at many points by certain fleshy bodies, or “carunculæ:” these are five in number in the hind and doe; more numerous, but of smaller size, in the cow; and in the sheep they are in great numbers and of various sizes. In dogs and cats these fleshy bodies entirely surround each ovum like a girdle. A similar substance, in the hare and mole, grows to the side of the uterus: like the human placenta, which embraces about half the “conception,” (just as the cup does the acorn at the commencement of its growth), it is attached by its convex aspect to the uterus, and by its concave surface to the chorion.

With these observations premised, I shall now state my opinions on the humours, membranes, fleshy substance of the uterus, and the distribution of the umbilical vessels, in the order described by Fabricius.

The words δεύτερα and ὔστερα are correctly understood by Fabricius[379] to answer to “secundæ” and “secundina” (the secundines): and by these are implied not only the membranes, but everything which comes away from the uterus at the last stage of parturition, or at least not long after it, viz. the humours, membranes, fleshy substance, and umbilical vessels.

Of the Humours.

The doctrines inculcated on the subject of the humours, and which, as being entertained by the ancients, Fabricius regards as certain truths requiring no farther proof, are altogether inconsistent and false; the doctrines, I mean, that the fluid within the amnion, wherein the fœtus swims, consists of sweat; and that within the chorion of urine. For both these humours are found in the “conception” before any trace of the fœtus is visible; added to which, the fluid they call urine can be seen before that which they regard as sweat. In truth, these humours, especially the outer one, may be observed in unfruitful conceptions where nothing like a fœtus is discoverable.

Women sometimes expel conceptions of this kind, analogous to the subventaneous or wind egg. Aristotle[380] says they are called “fluxes;” among ourselves they are termed “false conceptions,” or “slips.” An ovum of this kind was aborted in the case of Hippocrates’s pipe-player. “In all creatures,” we are informed on the authority of Aristotle,[381] “which breed another within themselves, immediately on conception an egg-like body is formed; that is to say, a body in which a fluid is contained within a delicate membrane just like an egg with the shell removed.” The humour in the chorion, which Fabricius and other physicians consider to be urine, Aristotle seems to have regarded as the seminal fluid (spermatis sive genituræ liquor). He says,[382] “when the semen is received into the uterus, after a certain time it becomes surrounded by a membrane, and if expulsion takes place before the fœtus is formed, it has the appearance of an egg with the shell removed and covered by its membrane: this membrane, moreover, is loaded with vessels.” It is, in fact, the chorion; so called from the conflux or multitude of veins. I have often observed ova of this kind escape in the second and third month; they are frequently decomposed internally, and come away gradually in the form of a leucorrhœal discharge, and thus the hopes of the parent are lost.

Another reason why these humours cannot be sweat and urine, is, that they exist in such abundance at the very beginning;—for the purpose, no doubt, of preventing the body of the fœtus from coming in contact with the adjacent parts when the mother runs, jumps, or uses violent exertion of any kind.

Added to which, many animals never sweat at all, (and we must remember what is said by Aristotle,[383] “that all creatures which swim, walk, or fly,” I will add serpents and insects, whether viviparous or oviparous, or generated spontaneously, “are produced after the same manner,”) as is the case with birds, serpents, and fishes, which neither sweat nor pass urine. The dog and cat also never sweat; neither in fact does any animal in which the urinary secretion is very abundant. Besides, it is impossible that urine can be passed before the kidneys and bladder are formed.

Moreover, and this is the strongest argument that can be brought forward, those humours can never be excrementitious into which so many branches of the umbilical vessels are distributed by means of the chorion; these vessels, in fact, in this manner taking up nourishment, (as it were from a large reservoir,) and then conducting it to the fœtus.

Besides what need is there of an allantois, if the fluid within the chorion is urine? And if that in the amnion is sweat, why does Nature, who contrives all things well, ordain that the fœtus should float about in its own excrement? And why, too, should the mother (as is the case with some animals) immediately after birth, so greedily devour the excretions of its own offspring, together with the containing membranes? Some have even observed that if the animal fails to eat up these matters it does not give its milk freely.

Notwithstanding these arguments, it may possibly be imagined by some that the humours which I believe serve for the nutrition of the fœtus are excrementitious, led chiefly by the fact that they increase as the fœtus grows larger, and in some animals are observed to exist in immense quantities at the period of birth (at which time it might be supposed that all alimentary matters would have been absorbed), and serve besides other uses hardly compatible with their supposed function of nutrition. I nevertheless most confidently assert my belief that these humours are at the commencement destined for the nourishment of the fœtus, just as the colliquament and albumen are in the case of the chick; but that, in course of time, when the thinner and purer portions are absorbed, the remainder takes on the character of excrementitious matter, but still has its uses, and in some animals especially conduces to the safety of the fœtus, and also greatly facilitates birth. For just as wine becomes poor and tasteless when the spirit has evaporated; and as all excreted matters owe their origin for the most part to what has been previously food; so, after all the nutrient portions of the fluid contained in the chorion have been taken up by the fœtus, the remainder become excrementitious, and is applied to the above-mentioned uses. But all the fluid of the amnion is usually consumed by the time of birth; so that it is probable the fœtus seeks its exit on account of deficiency of nutriment.

Lastly, if any other fluid is ever contained within the allantois, and this is sometimes the case, I believe it to be unnatural. For sometimes we see women at their delivery have an enormous flow of water, sometimes a distinctly double flow; and this the midwives call the “by-waters.” And so some women are seen with the abdomen immensely distended, and yet they bring forth a little shrivelled fœtus accompanied by a vast flow of water. Some imagine that a larger quantity of water is found with weakly and female children, whilst stronger and male fœtuses have a smaller share. I have often seen the waters come away in the middle of pregnancy, and abortion not take place, the child remaining strong and vigorous until birth. Since, then, there are naturally two collections of fluid, one in the chorion, the other in the amnion, so it sometimes happens that unnatural accumulations take place either in membranes of their own, or between the duplicatures of the chorion.

Of the Membranes.

With respect to the membranes or tunics of the uterus; as their special office is to contain the “waters,” and as these waters are two only, it is pretty certain that the membranes themselves do not necessarily or usually exceed that number.

Those who enumerate three tunics are, I believe, in error, owing to the ancients having described the same membrane at one time under the title of “chorion,” from the concourse of veins, at another under the name of “allantois” from its form.

Unquestionably, every “conception” is inclosed in two envelopes, just as the brain is surrounded by its two membranes; every tree and fruit, moreover, has its double bark; and lastly, seeds and fruits are protected by a double covering, the outermost of which is harder and stronger than the inner one.

Of the above-mentioned membranes, the innermost (that which contains the colliquament or purer fluid,) is exceedingly delicate; it is called the “amnion,” i.e. the mantle, from the way in which it is disposed round the fœtus. The outer tunic, however, is much thicker and stronger, and has received the name of “chorion,” “because,” says Fabricius, “a multitude of arteries and veins are aggregated together and arranged in it, as it were, after the manner of a chorus. Hence one of the tunics of the eye has been denominated χοροειδὴς (choroid) from its vessels having a similar arrangement to those in the chorion; the plexus of arteries and veins in the ventricles of the brain has also gained its name from the same circumstance.”

The chorion fills the whole uterus, and contains a viscid and rather turbid fluid; whilst the placenta, or carunculæ, adhere to its outer surface, and thus attach the “conception” to the uterus.

In the woman it is usually adherent to the amnion at its lower portion; nor can it be separated there without difficulty. In cloven-footed animals the chorion is of very large size, and contains a hundred times more fluid than the amnion: this last membrane at first is scarcely as large as a nutmeg, or broad bean, and is generally found in one or other horn of the uterus; that, namely, in which the embryo lies.

In the woman, more particularly, the chorion is externally rough and viscous, but internally it is smooth, slippery, and interwoven with abundance of vessels. In the woman, also, the upper part is thick and soft, but the lower is thinner and more membranous in character.

The placenta in the woman grows to the upper part of this membrane. In the sheep, numerous carunculæ adhere to it at various points. In the fallow and red deer the ovum is united to the uterus in five places only; whilst in the mare it is in contact with the inner surface of the uterus by an almost infinite number of points of attachment. Hence Fabricius[384] states that in almost all viviparous animals there is a soft, loose, porous, and thick fleshy body of a dark colour, in intimate union with the terminations of the umbilical vessels; he compares it to a sponge, or to the loose parenchyma of the liver or spleen; hence, too, it was called by Galen[385] “glandular flesh;” and it is now commonly known by the name of the uterine liver, in which the extremities of the umbilical vessels ramify to bring nutriment from the uterus to the fœtus.

But this fleshy substance is not found in all animals, nor at all periods of utero-gestation; but in those alone in which the conception adheres to the uterus; and then only when it becomes attached for the purpose of taking up nutriment. At the commencement the “conception” (like an egg placed within the uterus) is found in contact with every part of the uterus, yet at no point is it adherent; but produces and nourishes the embryo out of the humours contained within it, as I have explained in the instance of the hen’s egg. This adhesion, or growing together, first takes place, and the fleshy mass (constituting the bond of union between the “conception” and the uterus) is first produced, when the fœtus becomes perfectly formed, and, through want either of different or more abundant nourishment, dispatches the extremities of the umbilical vessels to the uterus, that from hence, (as plants do from the earth by their radicles) it may absorb the nutrient juices. For in the beginning, as I have said, when the “punctum saliens” and the blood can alone be seen, the ramifications of the umbilical vessels are only visible in the colliquament and amnion. When, however, the fabric of the body is completely formed, the ramifications extend further, and are distributed in vast numbers throughout the chorion, that from the albuminous fluid which there exists, they may obtain nourishment for the fœtus.

Hence it is manifest that the young of viviparous animals are at the beginning nourished in exactly the same manner as the chick in the egg; and that they are detained within the uterus in order that (when they can no longer supply themselves with nutriment from their own stores) they may form adhesions to it by means of this fleshy substance, and receiving more abundant supplies of food from the mother, may be nourished and made to grow.

Wherefore Fabricius has rightly observed, that in some animals the “conception” is scarcely attached to the uterus at all. Thus the sow and the mare have no such fleshy mode of union,—but in them the ovum or “conception,” as in the beginning it is formed out of the humours of the uterus, so it is nourished subsequently by the same means; just as the ovum of the hen is supplied with aliment at the expense of the albuminous matter without any connexion whatever with the uterus: and thus the fœtus is furnished with aliment by the “conception” in which it is contained, and is nourished as the chick is from the fluids of the egg. This is a strong argument that the fœtus of viviparous animals is no more nourished by the blood of the mother than the chick in the egg; and moreover, that the fluid within the chorion is neither urine nor any other excrementitious matter; but serves for the support of the fœtus. Although, as I have before remarked, it is possible when all the nutrient portions have been taken up, the remainder may degenerate into excrementitious matter resembling urine. This is also clear from what I formerly observed of the cotyledons in the deer, viz., that in these animals the fleshy mass was of a spongy character, and constituted, like a honeycomb, of innumerable shallow pits filled with a muco-albuminous fluid, (a circumstance already observed by Galen[386]); and that from this source the ramifications of the umbilical vessels absorbed the nutriment and carried it to the fœtus: just as, in animals after their birth, the extremities of the mesenteric vessels are spread over the coats of the intestines and thence take up chyle.

Of the Placenta.

In my opinion, then, the placenta and carunculæ have an office analogous to that of the liver and mamma. The liver elaborates for the nourishment of the body, the chyle previously taken up from the intestines: the placenta, in like manner, prepares for the fœtus alimentary matters which have come from the mother. The mammæ also, which are of a glandular structure, swell with milk, and although in some animals they are not even visible at other times, they become full and tumid at the period of pregnancy; so, too, the placenta, a loose and fungus-like body, abounds in an albuminous fluid, and is only to be found at the period of pregnancy. The liver, I say, then, is the nutrient organ of the body in which it is found; the mamma is the same of the infant, and the placenta of the embryo. And just as the mother forms more milk from her food than is requisite to sustain her own flesh and blood, which milk is digested and elaborated in the mamma; so do those animals, furnished with a placenta, supply to the fœtus nourishment which is purified in that organ. Hence it happens that the embryo is furnished with good or bad nutriment just as the mother takes wholesome or unwholesome food, and in proportion as it is elaborately prepared or not in these uterine structures. For some embryos have a more perfect structure provided for them, such as that fleshy substance mentioned above, which in some is altogether wanting. In some, also, the placenta is observed to be thicker, larger, and more loaded with blood; whilst in others it is more spongy and white, like the thymus or pancreas. But there is not more variety found in the placenta than in the mamma or viscera generally: for instance, the liver in some animals is red and filled with blood, in others, as is the case with fishes and some cachectic persons in the human species, it is of much paler hue. The mare feeds on crude grass, and does not ruminate; the sow gorges itself with any unclean food; and in both the placenta, or organ for perfecting the aliment, is wanting.

Rightly then is it observed by Fabricius,[387] that “this fleshy structure, differs much in shape, size, position, and number in different kinds of animals. The human female has one placenta only; as is the case with the mouse, rabbit, guinea-pig, dog, and cat:” so also with many animals which have the toes distinct, and incisor teeth in both jaws. “All those which have the hoof cloven and incisors in one jaw only, have several placentæ, whether they be domesticated animals, like the sheep, cow, and goat, or wild, as the red-deer, roe, fallow-deer, and others of the same kind. Again, where there is only one of these fleshy structures it either resembles a cake, (whence its name placenta), as in the human female, rabbit, hare, mole, mouse, and guinea-pig; or else it is like a girdle or bandage encircling the trunk of the body, as in the dog, cat, ferret, and the like.” In some it resembles the cup or chalice of the acorn, and surrounds the greater part of the “conception,” as in the hare and rabbit, its convex part adhering to the uterus, the concave looking towards the fœtus. “Again, in animals which have this structure in the form of a cake, although the shape is similar, the situation in which it is found is very different. In the human female it adheres to the fundus of the uterus, and is as far removed from the fœtus as possible, their connexion being effected by means of long vessels. In the mouse, guinea-pig, and rabbit, it is attached partly in the region of the loins, partly at the sides of the thorax. Those animals which have numerous placentæ are all furnished with incisors in one jaw only, as the sheep, cow, goat, red-deer, roe, and the like. Yet in these some variety is observable.”

For in the sheep the carunculæ are many in number, and of different magnitudes, the largest being of the size of a nutmeg, the smallest of that of a pea or vetch: they are also of a rounded form and reddish hue, with their convex portion turned towards the uterus, something in the semblance of soft warts or nipples. “In the cow they are larger, wider, and whiter, more like a spongy or fungoid body,” and they appear to take their origin from the chorion. In the red or fallow-deer they are five only in number; these spring from the walls of the uterus, and thrust themselves inwards, exhibiting their depressions or acetabula on the side of the fœtus. But in all animals it is observed that the carunculæ adhere firmly to the uterus, and cannot be separated from it without considerable difficulty, except at the period of birth; at which time they become loosened from their attachments and fall like ripe fruit. If they are forcibly torn from the uterus, I have observed the greater part of the blood that escapes to flow, not from the “conception,” but from the uterus itself.

Fabricius,[388] when discussing the mode of union between the “fleshy substance” and the uterus, uses many arguments, but in my opinion weak ones, to prove that the umbilical vessels anastomose with those of the uterus: yet he seems chiefly to have done so to countenance the old opinion once held almost by all; for he confesses that he can make no positive assertion on the subject, “because the fleshy mass itself stands in the way of any accurate investigation.” Yet neither reason nor observation would lead us to believe that more anastomoses exist in the uterus, than in the liver between the branches of the vena portæ and the cava; or in the mamma, between the vessels which transmit blood and those which carry milk. There may be, indeed, at places a juxtaposition of vessels, and sometimes the insertion of one into the coats of another; but the perfect coalition and union, described by Fabricius, never exist. Were it so, the veins and arteries ought to be continuous; for the vessels which bring the blood from the mother into the uterus and carunculæ are arteries, whilst those which pass from the uterus to the fœtus are veins, as is readily apparent; for they carry blood from the placenta into the vena cava.

Hence the opinion of Arantius seems to me to be the true one, viz. that the orifices of the umbilical veins are in no way continuous with the uterine vessels. For there is a smaller number of vessels carrying blood to the uterus than there is of veins returning it to the fœtus; and the greater part of the roots of those terminate in the chorion. Yet Fabricius, either from respect to the ancients, or through an envious feeling towards Arantius, most pertinaciously holds to the old opinion.

Of the Acetabula.

Fabricius[389] has ascertained nothing on the subject of the “cotyledons” or “acetabula;” he gives only the various opinions of the ancients. In the former part of my work, however, in the history of the fœtus in the deer, I have mentioned the animals in which acetabula are found; at the same time I described them as constituting numerous cells of a small size scattered throughout the carunculæ, or “fleshy substance,” and filled with an albuminous or mucilaginous fluid, like a honeycomb full of honey.

In the deer they greatly resemble in shape the cavity of the haunch-bone which receives the head of the thigh; hence their name in Greek, κοτυλήδονες (little measures); and in Latin, acetabula, because they resemble the little cups formerly brought to table filled with vinegar for sauce.

These cavities do not exceed in size the holes in a large sponge, and a delicate ramification of the umbilical vessels penetrates deeply into each of them; for in them aliment is laid up for the fœtus, not indeed constituted of blood, as Fabricius would have it, but matter of a mucous character, and greatly resembling the thicker part of the albumen in the egg. Hence it is clear, as I have before observed, that the fœtus in cloven-footed animals (as indeed in all others) is not nourished by the blood of the mother.

Aristotle’s[390] statement, “that the acetabula gradually diminish with the growth of the fœtus, and at last disappear,” is not borne out by experiment; for as the fœtus increases so do the carunculæ; the acetabula at the same time become more capacious and numerous, and more full of the albuminous matter.

If the carunculæ are pressed no blood escapes, but just as water or honey can be squeezed from a sponge or honeycomb, so if pressure is made a whitish fluid oozes from out of the acetabula, which then become shrunk, white, and flaccid, and at last come to resemble a nipple, or a large flabby wart.

Aristotle asserts, with truth, that acetabula are not found in all animals; for they do not exist in the woman, nor (as far as I know) in any animal which possesses a single fleshy substance or placenta. As to the uses of the carunculæ, I believe that, like the mamma, they elaborate not blood but a fluid resembling albumen, and that this serves for the nourishment of the fœtus.

Of the Umbilical Cord.

Fabricius gives an elegant description, as well as most beautiful figures, of the umbilical vessels. “The veins,” he says,[391] “which pass from the uterus in the direction of the fœtus are always closely united and become larger and larger as they proceed; nor does this mutual interlacement cease until all end in two large trunks; these penetrate the fœtus at the umbilicus, and become one vein of great size, which is inserted into the liver of the fœtus, and has a communication both with the vena cava and vena portæ. In like manner the arteries which accompany the veins, being many in number and exceedingly minute, pass from the uterus towards the fœtus, and, gradually uniting and increasing in size, terminate in two large trunks; these, after penetrating the umbilicus, separate from the veins, and attaching themselves to the lateral surface of the bladder by the intervention of a membrane, proceed downwards on either side and become continuous with the branches of the aorta descending to the thigh.” It must be observed, however, that this description of Fabricius applies only to the umbilical vessels of the human fœtus, and not to the young of every animal. Nor even does it hold in the case of the human fœtus except when it is full grown; for at the beginning the arteries make little show, and are so small as to require the eyes of a lynx to see them; nor afterwards indeed are they distinguishable except by their pulsation: in other particulars they resemble veins. Since then, as I have elsewhere shown, the very small branches of arteries do not pulsate, in so far as the eye is concerned, there can be no difference between them and veins. The arteries, I say, at this time are so fine and minute, that they are woven, as it were, like the most delicate threads, into the tissues of the veins, or rather in some obscure manner insinuate themselves into them; hence they almost entirely elude the sight. But all the veins, by a retrograde movement, unite their twigs and terminate in one trunk like the branches of a tree, in the same manner as the mesenteric veins, all of which terminate in the vena portæ.

Near the embryo [the umbilical veins] are divided into two trunks, but when entered within it they constitute one umbilical vein, which ends in the vena cava, near the right auricle of the heart, and passes through the liver, entering the vena portæ; giving off no branches besides until it leaves the convex portion of the liver by a very large orifice. So that if the vena cava is opened from the right auricle downwards and emptied of blood, three apertures may be seen close to each other; one is the entrance of the vena cava descendens, the second that of the hepatic vein, which ramifies throughout the convex portion of the liver, and the third is the origin of the umbilical vein. Hence it is quite clear that the origin of the veins is by no means to be looked for in the liver; inasmuch as the orifice of the vena cava descendens is much larger than the hepatic branch, which is indeed equalled in size by the umbilical vein. For the branches are not said to be the origin of their trunk; but where the trunk is greatest there the origin of the veins is to be looked for, and this is the case at the entrance of the right ventricle: here, then, the origin of all veins, and the storehouse of the blood must be placed.

To return to the umbilical vessels, which are not subdivided in the same way in all animals; for in some two or more branches of veins are found within the body of the fœtus,—some of which pass through the liver, whilst others join the portal and mesenteric veins. In the human fœtus, at a distance of three or four fingers’ breadth from the umbilicus, the trunks of the arteries and veins are involved together in a complicated manner, (as if one were to twist several waxen tapers in the form of a stick,) and are besides covered and held together by a thick gelatinous membrane. This cord passes on towards the chorion, and when arrived at the concave portion of the placenta and the inner surface of the chorion, splits into innumerable branches; these divide again, and constitute the means by which the nutrient matter is taken up, as by rootlets, and distributed to the fœtus. The veins of the cord are marked at various places by knots or varices, resembling vesicles filled with blood; this is a contrivance of nature to prevent the blood rushing too violently to the fœtus. From the number of these knots superstitious midwives are accustomed to predict the number of the future offspring; and if none can be seen at all they pronounce that the woman will be ever after barren: they also absurdly prophesy by the distance between the knots about the interval to take place between the birth of each child, and also of its sex from their colour.

A like arrangement of the umbilical vessels is found in almost all fœtuses furnished with a single placenta, as in the dog, mouse, and others; but in these the cord is shorter and less convoluted. In the ox, sheep, red-deer, fallow-deer, hog, and others, in which the nutrient material is not supplied from one fleshy mass or placenta, but from several, the umbilical vessels are distributed in a different manner. The branches and extremities of these vessels are not only disseminated through the fleshy substance, but still more and chiefly through the membrane of the chorion itself by means of the most delicate fibres; exactly in the same way as the vessels are distributed in the human fœtus, without the aid of the cord, before the “conception” adheres to the uterus. Hence it is plain that the embryo does not derive all its nourishment from the placenta, but receives a considerable portion of it from the fluid contained in the chorion.

As to the uses of the umbilical vessels, I cannot agree with Fabricius, for he imagines that all the blood is supplied to the fœtus from the uterus by means of the veins, and that the vital spirits are transmitted from the mother by the arteries. He also asserts that no part of the fœtus performs any common function, but that each individual portion looks only to itself, how it may be nourished, grow, and be preserved. In like manner, because he has found no nerve in the umbilical cord, he refuses to allow sensation or voluntary motion to the fœtus. Just as if the uterus or placenta of the mother were the heart or first source whence these functions are derived to the fœtus, and whence heat flows in and is distributed through all its parts. All these are manifest errors. For the human fœtus, even before the completion of the fourth month, (in some animals sooner,) in no obscure manner moves, rolls about, and kicks, especially if it suffer from cold, heat, or any external source of inconvenience. Moreover, the “punctum saliens” (whilst yet the heart is not) moves to and fro, with an evident pulsation, and distributes blood and spirits; and this part, as I have before stated, if languid and nearly extinct through cold, will, if warmth be applied, again be restored and live. In the Cæsarean section, also, it is quite clear that the life of the embryo does not immediately depend upon the mother, and that the spirits do not proceed from her; for I have often seen the fœtus extracted alive from the uterus when the mother has been dead some hours. I have also known the rabbit and hare survive when extracted from the uterus of the dead mother. Besides, in a tedious labour we learn whether the infant is alive or not by the pulsation of the umbilical arteries; and it is certain that these arteries receive their impulse from the heart of the fœtus and not of the mother, for the rhythm of the two differs: this can be easily ascertained if one hand is applied to the wrist of the mother and the other to the umbilical cord. Nay, in the Cæsarean section, when the embryo is still enveloped in the chorion, I have often found the umbilical arteries pulsating, and the fœtus lively, even when the mother was dead and her limbs stiffened. It is not, therefore, true that the “spirits” pass from the mother to the fœtus through the arteries; nor is it more so that the umbilical or fœtal vessels anastomose with those of the uterus. The fœtus has a proper life of its own, and possesses pulsating arteries filled with blood and “spirits,” long before the “conception,” in which it is formed and dwells, is attached to the uterus; just as it is with the chick in the egg.

In my treatise on the Circulation of the Blood I have shown the uses of the arteries, both in the fœtus and in the adult, to be very different from what is generally supposed, and my views receive confirmation from the subject now under consideration.

In truth, the “secundines” are part of the “conception,” and depend upon it, borrowing thence their life and faculty of growth. For, just as in the mesentery, the blood is propelled to the intestines by the branches of the cœliac and mesenteric arteries, and returns thence by means of the veins to the liver and heart, together with the chyle, so in like manner do the umbilical arteries carry the blood to the secundines; which blood, together with the nutrient fluid, is brought back by the veins to the fœtus. Hence it is that these arteries do not proceed immediately from the heart, as if they were the principal vessels, but take their origin from the arteries of the lower limbs, as being of inferior rank, use, and magnitude.

Adrian Spigelius lately published a book entitled ‘On the Formation of the Fœtus’ (de Formato Fœtu); in which he treats of the uses of the umbilical arteries, and proves, by powerful arguments, that the fœtus does not receive vital “spirits” from the mother through the arteries; he also answers fully the arguments on the other side. He could also have shown by the same arguments that neither is the blood transferred to the fœtus from the vessels of the mother by means of the branches of the umbilical veins; this is especially clear from the case of the hen’s egg, and also of the Cæsarean section. In truth, if heat and life flow to the blood from the mother, should she die the child must straightway be destroyed also, for the same fatality must attach to both; nay, the child must be the first to perish; for as dissolution approaches, the subordinate parts languish and grow chill before the principal ones, and so the heart fails last of all. The blood, I mean of the fœtus, would be the first to lose its heat and become unfit to perform its functions were it derived from the uterus, since the uterus would be deprived of all vital heat before the heart.

ON CONCEPTION.

Fabricius has indeed recounted many wonderful things on the subject of parturition; for my own part, I think there is more to admire and marvel at in conception. It is a matter, in truth, full of obscurity; yet will I venture to put forth a few things—rather though as questions proposed for solution—that I may not appear to subvert other men’s opinions only, without bringing forward anything of my own. Yet what I shall state I wish not to be taken as if I thought it a voice from an oracle, or desired to gain the assent of others by violence; I claim, however, that liberty which I willingly yield to others, the permission, viz. in subjects of difficulty to put forward as true such things as appear to be probable until proved to be manifestly false.

It is to the uterus that the business of conception is chiefly intrusted: without this structure and its functions conception would be looked for in vain. But since it is certain that the semen of the male does not so much as reach the cavity of the uterus, much less continue long there, and that it carries with it a fecundating power by a kind of contagious property, (not because it is then and there in actual contact, or operates, but because it previously has been in contact); the woman, after contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to receive influence, and to become fecundated without the co-operation of any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the magnet is endowed with its powers and can attract other iron to itself. When this virtue is once received the woman exercises a plastic power of generation, and produces a being after her own image; not otherwise than the plant, which we see endowed with the forces of both sexes.

Yet it is a matter of wonder where this faculty abides after intercourse is completed, and before the formation of the ovum or “conception.” To what is this active power of the male committed? is it to the uterus solely, or to the whole woman? or is it to the uterus primarily and to the woman secondarily? or, lastly, does the woman conceive in the womb, as we see by the eye and think by the brain?

For although the woman conceiving after intercourse sometimes produces no fœtus, yet we know that phenomena occur which clearly indicate that conception has really taken place, although without result. Over-fed bitches, which admit the dog without fecundation following, are nevertheless observed to be sluggish about the time they should have whelped, and to bark as they do when their time is at hand, also to steal away the whelps from another bitch, to tend and lick them, and also to fight fiercely for them. Others have milk or colostrum, as it is called, in their teats, and are, moreover, subject to the diseases of those which have actually whelped; the same thing is seen in hens which cluck at certain times, although they have no eggs on which to sit. Some birds also, as pigeons, if they have admitted the male, although they lay no eggs at all, or only barren ones, are found equally sedulous in building their nests.

The virtue which proceeds from the male in coitu has such prodigious power of fecundation, that the whole woman, both in mind and body, undergoes a change. And although it is the uterus made ready for this, on which the first influences are impressed, and from which virtue and strength are diffused throughout the body, the question still remains, how it is that the power thus communicated remains attached to the uterus? is it to the whole uterus or only to a part of it? nothing is to be found within it after coitus, for the semen in a short time either falls out or evaporates, and the blood, its circle completed, returns from the uterus by the vessels.

Again, what is this preparation or maturity of the uterus which eagerly demands the fecundating seed? whence does it proceed? Certain it is, unless the uterus be ready for coition every attempt at fecundation is vain; nay, in some animals, at no other time is the male admitted. It happens occasionally, I allow, that this maturity arrives earlier in some from the solicitations of the male animal; it is itself, however, a purely natural result, just as is the ripening of the fruit in trees. What these changes are I will now recount, as I have found them by observation.

The uterus first appears more thick and fleshy; then its inner surface, the future residence, that is, of the “conception,” becomes softer, and resembles in smoothness and delicacy the ventricles of the brain; this I have already described in the deer and other cloven-footed tribes. But in the dog, cat, and other multiparous and digitated animals, the horns of the uterus—clearly corresponding to the round tubes of the woman [Fallopian tubes], the appendices of the intestines in birds, or the ureters in man—exhibit little protuberances at certain intervals, which swell up and become extremely soft; these, after intercourse, appear to open themselves, (as I have observed in deer;) from them the first white fluid transudes into the uterus, and out of this the “conception,” or ovum, is formed. In this way the uterus, by means of the male, (like fruit by the summer’s heat,) is brought to the highest pitch of maturity, and becomes impregnated.

But since there are no manifest signs of conception before the uterus begins to relax, and the white fluid or slender threads (like the spider’s web) constituting the “primordium” of the future “conception,” or ovum, shows itself; and since the substance of the uterus, when ready to conceive, is very like the structure of the brain, why should we not suppose that the function of both is similar, and that there is excited by coitus within the uterus a something identical with, or at least analogous to, an “imagination” (phantasma) or a “desire” (appetitus) in the brain, whence comes the generation or procreation of the ovum? For the functions of both are termed “conceptions,” and both, although the primary sources of every action throughout the body, are immaterial, the one of natural or organic, the other of animal actions; the one (viz. the uterus) the first cause and beginning of every action which conduces to the generation of the animal, the other (viz. the brain) of every action done for its preservation. And just as a “desire” arises from a conception of the brain, and this conception springs from some external object of desire, so also from the male, as being the more perfect animal, and, as it were, the most natural object of desire, does the natural (organic) conception arise in the uterus, even as the animal conception does in the brain.

From this desire, or conception, it results that the female produces an offspring like the father. For just as we, from the conception of the “form” or “idea” in the brain, fashion in our works a form resembling it, so, in like manner, the “idea,” or “form,” of the father existing in the uterus generates an offspring like himself with the help of the formative faculty, impressing, however, on its work its own immaterial “form.” In the same way art, which in the brain is the εἶδος or “form” of the future work, produces, when in operation, its like, and begets it out of “matter.” So too the painter, by means of conception, pictures to himself a face, and by imitating this internal conception of the brain carries it out into act; so also the builder constructs his house according to previous conception. The same thing takes place in every other action and artificial production. Thus, what education effects in the brain, viz. art, with its analogue does the coitus of the male endow the uterus, viz. the plastic art; hence many similar or dissimilar fœtuses are produced at the same coitus. For if the productions and first conceptions of art (the mere imitations of nature) are in this way formed in the brain, how much more probable is it that copies (exemplaria) of animal generation and conception should in like manner be produced in the uterus?

And since Nature, all of whose works are wonderful and divine, has devised an organ of this kind, viz. the brain, by the virtue and sensitive faculty of which the conceptions of the rational soul exist, such as the desires and the arts, the first principles and causes of so many and such various works, of which man, by means of the impulsive faculty of the brain, is by imitation the author; why should we not suppose that the same Nature, who in the uterus has constructed an organ no less wonderful, and adapted it by means of a similar structure to perform all that appertains to conception, has destined it for a similar or at least an analogous function, and intended an organ altogether similar for a similar use? For as the skilful artificer accomplishes his works by ingeniously adapting his instruments to each, so that from the substance and shape of these instruments it is easy to judge of their use and application, with no less certainty than we have been taught by Aristotle[392] to recognize the nature of animals from the structure and arrangement of their bodily organs; and as physiognomy instructs us to judge of a man’s disposition and character from the shape of his face and features, what should prevent us from supposing that where the same structure exists there is the same function implanted?

But it is so unfairly ordered that, when customary and familiar matters come to be debated, this very familiarity lessens their importance and our wonder; whilst things of much less moment, because they are novel and rare, appear to us far greater objects of marvel. Whoever has pondered with himself how the brain of the artist, or rather the artist by means of his brain, pictures to the life things which are not present to him, but which he has once seen; also in what manner birds immured in cages recall to mind the spring, and chant exactly the songs they had learned the preceding summer, although meanwhile they had never practised them; again, and this is more strange, how the bird artistically builds its nest, the copy of which it had never seen, and this not from memory or habit, but by means of an imaginative faculty (phantasia), and how the spider weaves its web, without either copy or brain, solely by the help of this imaginative power; whosoever, I say, ponders these things, will not, I think, regard it as absurd or monstrous, that the woman should be impregnated by the conception of a general immaterial “idea,” and become the artificer of generation.

I know well that some censorious persons will laugh at this,—men who believe nothing true but what they think so themselves. Yet this that I do is the practice of philosophers, who, when they cannot clearly comprehend how a thing really is brought to pass, devise some mode for it in accordance with the other works of nature, and as near as possible to what is true. And indeed all those opinions which we now regard as of the greatest weight, were at the beginning mere figments and imaginations, until confirmed by experiments addressed to the senses, and made credible by a knowledge of their positive causes. Aristotle[393] says “that philosophers are in some sort lovers of fables, seeing that fable is made up of marvels.” And indeed men were first led to cultivate philosophy from wondering at what they saw. For my own part, then, when I see nothing left in the uterus after intercourse to which I can ascribe the principle of generation, any more than there is in the brain anything discoverable after sensation and experience, which are the prime sources of art, and when I find the structure of both alike, I have devised this fable. Let learned and ingenious men consider of it, let the supercilious reject it, and those who are peevish and scoffing laugh if they please.

Since, then, nothing can be apprehended by the senses in the uterus after coition, and since it is necessary that there be something to render the female fruitful, and as this is probably not material, it remains for us to take refuge in the notion of a mere conception and of “species without matter” (species sine materiâ), and imagine that the same thing happens here as every one allows takes place in the brain, unless indeed there be some one “whom the gods have moulded of better clay,” and made fit to discover some other efficient cause besides any of those enumerated.

Some philosophers of our time have returned to the old opinion about atoms, and so imagine that this generative contagion, as indeed all others, proceeds from the subtile emanations of the semen of the male, which rise like odorous particles, and gain an entrance into the uterus at the period of intercourse. Others invoke to their aid incorporeal spirits, such as demiurgi, angels, and demons. Others regard it as a process of fermentation. Others devise other theories. I pray, therefore, a place for this conjecture of mine until something certain is established in the matter.

Many observations have been made by me which would easily overthrow the opinions I have mentioned, so easy is it to say what a thing is not rather than what it is; this is not, however, the place to introduce them, although elsewhere it is my intention to do so. On the present occasion I shall only observe, if that which is called by the common name of “contagion,” as arising from the contact of the spermatic fluid in intercourse, and which remains in the woman (without the actual presence of the semen) as the efficient of the future offspring—if, I say, this contagion (whether it be atoms, odorous particles, fermentation, or anything else) is not of the nature of any corporeal substance, it follows of necessity that it is incorporeal. And if on further inquiry it should appear that it is neither spirit nor demon, nor soul, nor any part of the soul, nor anything having a soul, as I believe can be proved by various arguments and experiments, what remains, since I am unable myself to conjecture anything besides, nor has any one imagined aught else even in his dreams, but to confess myself at a stand-still? “For whoever,” says Aristotle,[394] “doubts and wonders, confesses his ignorance; therefore if to escape the imputation of ignorance, ingenious men have turned to philosophy, it is clear they follow their pursuit for the sake of knowledge, and not from any other motive.”

It must not, then, be imputed to me for blame, if, eager for knowledge, and approaching untrodden ground, I have presented aught which at first sight may appear made up or fabulous. For as everything is not to be received at once with an unthinking credulity, so that which has been long and painfully considered must not be straightway rejected, even although it fail to catch the eye of the quick-sighted. Aristotle himself wrote a book, ‘De Mirabilibus audits,’ on hearsay wonders; and elsewhere he says,[395] “We must not only thank those in whose opinions we acquiesce, but those also who have said aught (to the purpose) although superficially. For these bring in something to the common stock, in this, that they exercise and train our habits. For if Timotheus had not existed, we should have lost much music. Yet if Phrynis had not been we should have had no Timotheus. So is it with those who have laid down any truth. For we have received some opinions from certain philosophers, yet were there others to whom these owed their existence.”

Influenced, then, by the example and authority of so great a man, and not to appear resolute only to subvert the doctrines of others, I have preferred proposing a fanciful opinion rather than none at all, playing in this the part of Phrynis to Timotheus, my object being to shake off the sloth of the age we live in, to rouse the intellects of the studious, and, rather than that the diligent investigator of nature should accuse me of indolence, to bid him laugh at my ill-formed and crude notions.

In truth, there is no proposition more magnificent to investigate or more useful to ascertain than this: How are all things formed by an “univocal” agent? How does the like ever generate the like? And this not only in productions of art (for so house builds house, face designs face, and image forms image), but also in things relating to the mind, for mind begets mind, opinion is the source of opinion. Democritus with his atoms, and Eudoxus with his chief good which he placed in pleasure, impregnated Epicurus; the four elements of Empedocles, Aristotle; the doctrines of the ancient Thebans, Pythagoras and Plato; geometry, Euclid. By this same law the son is born like his parents, and virtues which ennoble and vices which degrade a race are sometimes passed on to descendants through a long series of years. Some diseases propagate their kind, as lepra, gout, syphilis, and others. But why do I speak of diseases, when the moles, warts, and cicatrices of the progenitor are sometimes repeated in the descendant after many generations?[396] “Every fourth birth,” says Pliny,[397] “the mark of the origin of the Dacian family is repeated on the arm.” Why may not the thoughts, opinions, and manners now prevalent, many years hence return again, after an intermediate period of neglect? For the divine mind of the Eternal Creator, which is impressed on all things, creates the image of itself in human conceptions.

Having, therefore, overcome some difficulties relating to the subject, I feel a greater desire to enter into it a little more closely, and this with two objects in view—first, that what I have hitherto treated cursorily may seem to carry with it a greater weight of probability; and secondly, to stir up the intellects of the studious to search more deeply into so obscure a subject.

To illustrate the matter, let A stand for the fecundated egg (the “matter” that is of the future chick), which is alterable or convertible into the chick, and is in fact the chicken in posse. Let B be that which fecundates the egg, and thus distinguishes it from an unfruitful egg, i. e. the “efficient cause” of the chick, or that which puts the egg in motion, and converts it into a chick. And let C be the chick, or “final cause,” for the sake of which both the egg and that which fecundates the egg exist, the actual chick, namely, or “reason” why the chick is.

Now we take for granted, as demonstrated by Aristotle,[398] that every prime mover is “combined with” that which is moved by it. And these things are more particularly said by him to be “together” which are generated or produced at the same moment of time: thus that which moves and that which is moved are actually together, and where one is there the other is also; for it is evident that when the effect is present the cause must be so too.

Whenever, then, A (i. e. the fecundated egg) is actually in being, B (i. e. the internal moving and “efficient” or fecundating cause) is also actually in being. But when B is actually in being, C also (i. e. the immaterial “form” of the chick) must, at least in some sort, be existing too. For B is the internal efficient cause of the chick, that, namely, which alters A (the egg) into C (the “reason” why the chick is). Since, then, everything which moves coexists with that which is moved by it, and every cause with its effect, it follows that C coexists with B; for the “final cause,” both in nature and art, is primary to all other causes, since it moves, and is not itself moved; but the “efficient” moves, because it is impelled by the “final cause.” There inheres, in some way or other, in every “efficient cause” a ratio finis (a final cause), and by this the efficient, co-operating with Providence, is moved.

The authority of Aristotle is clearly on my side: “That,” he says,[399] “appears to hold the chief place among natural causes which we signify under this expression, ‘cujus gratiâ’—for whose sake. For this is the ‘reason;’ but the ‘reason’ is the chief thing, as well in artificial as in natural subjects. For when a physician explains what health is, either by definition or description, or a workman a house, he is accustomed to give the reasons and causes of what he does, and adds why he does it; although that cause, ‘cujus gratiâ,’ and the reason ‘for the sake of the good and fair,’ are joined rather to the works of nature than to those of art.”

“The end,” he elsewhere says,[400] “is this ‘cujus gratiâ’ (for whose sake), as health is the thing for the sake of which we walk. For why does a man walk? We answer, for the sake of his health; and when we have thus said, we think we have given a ‘cause;’ and whatever else is further interposed, by means of another agent, is done for the sake of this end, as dieting, or purging, or drugs, or instruments, are all for the sake of health; for all these are for the sake of the end.” Again, “It is our business always to seek the primary cause of everything. For instance, a man builds a house because he is a builder, but he is a builder by reason of the art of building; this then (the art) is a prior cause; and so in all things.” Hence it is that he asserts[401] “that the cause which first moves, and in which the ‘reason’ and ‘form’ lie, is greater and more divine than the ‘material cause.’”

In all natural generation, therefore, both the “matter” out of which and the “efficient cause” by which (namely, A, the thing which is moved, and B, the thing moving) are alike for the sake of the animal begotten or to be begotten; for that which moves and is not itself moved, viz. C, is in (inest) both. For both those (viz. A and B) are at the same time capable of motion, and are moreover moved, viz. the thing fecundating, B, (which both moves and is moved) and the thing fecundated, A, the “matter,” viz. or ovum, which is moved and changed only. Wherefore if no moveable thing is actually moved, unless the thing which moves is present, so neither will “matter” be moved, nor the “efficient” effect anything, unless the first moving cause be in some way present; and this is the “form” or “species” which is without matter, and is the prime cause. “For the efficient and generating,” according to Aristotle,[402] “in so far as they are so, belong to that which is effected and generated.” The following syllogism, therefore, may be framed out of these first and necessary predicates:

Whenever B is actually in existence, C also is actually in existence (i. e. moving in some way).

Whenever A is actually in existence, B is also in actual existence.

Therefore whenever A is in actual existence, C is also in actual existence.

Natural and artificial generation take place after the same manner.[403] Both are instituted for the sake of something further, and by a kind of providence both direct themselves to a proposed end;—both too are first moved by some “form” conceived without matter, and are the products of this conception. The brain is the organ of one kind of conception (for in the soul, the organ of which is the brain, art, without the intervention of matter, is the “reason” or first cause of the work), the uterus or ovum of the other.

The “conception,” therefore, of the uterus or the ovum resembles, at least in some sort, the conception of the brain itself, and in a similar way does the “end” inhere in both. For the “species” or “form” of the chick is in the uterus or ovum without the intervention of matter, just as the “reason” of his work is in the artist, e. g. the “reason” of the house in the brain of the builder.

But since the phrase “to be in” is perhaps equivocal, and things are said to be coexistent in various senses, I affirm, further, and say, that the “species” and immaterial “form” of the future chick are, in some sort, the cause of the impregnation or fecundation of the uterus, because after intercourse no corporeal substance can be found within that organ.

But how this immaterial cause, this first principle, exists alike in the uterus and brain, or how the conceptions of the brain and uterus, answering to art and nature, resemble or differ from each other, and in what way the thing which fecundates (viz. the internal efficient cause whereby the animal is generated) exists alike in the male and his semen and in the woman and her uterus—in the egg also, the mixed work of both sexes—and wherein their differences consist, I shall subsequently attempt to explain when I treat generally of the generation of animals (as well of those creatures which are produced by metamorphosis, viz. insects, as of spontaneously generated beings, in whose ova or “primordia,” as in all other seeds, the “species” or immaterial “form” plainly dwells, the moving principle, as it were, of those things which are to be generated), and when I speak of the soul and its affections, and how art, memory, and experience are to be regarded as the conceptions of the brain alone.

THE ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION
OF THE BODY OF
THOMAS PARR,
WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO YEARS;
MADE BY
WILLIAM HARVEY,
OTHERS OF THE KING’S PHYSICIANS BEING PRESENT,
ON THE 16TH OF NOVEMBER, THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTHDAY
OF HER SERENE HIGHNESS
HENRIETTA MARIA, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE AND IRELAND.

[This account first appeared in the work of Dr. Bett, entitled: “De Ortu et Natura Sanguinis,” 8vo. London, 1669, the MS. having been presented to Bett by Mr. Michael Harvey, nephew of the author, with whom Bett informs us he was on terms of intimacy.—Ed.]

ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR.

Thomas Parr, a poor countryman, born near Winnington, in the county of Salop, died on the 14th of November, in the year of grace 1635, after having lived one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months, and survived nine princes. This poor man, having been visited by the illustrious Earl of Arundel when he chanced to have business in these parts, (his lordship being moved to the visit by the fame of a thing so incredible,) was brought by him from the country to London; and, having been most kindly treated by the earl both on the journey and during a residence in his own house, was presented as a remarkable sight to his Majesty the King.

Having made an examination of the body of this aged individual, by command of his Majesty, several of whose principal physicians were present, the following particulars were noted:

The body was muscular, the chest hairy, and the hair on the fore-arms still black; the legs, however, were without hair, and smooth.

The organs of generation were healthy, the penis neither retracted nor extenuated, nor the scrotum filled with any serous infiltration, as happens so commonly among the decrepid; the testes, too, were sound and large; so that it seemed not improbable that the common report was true, viz. that he did public penance under a conviction for incontinence, after he had passed his hundredth year; and his wife, whom he had married as a widow in his hundred-and-twentieth year, did not deny that he had intercourse with her after the manner of other husbands with their wives, nor until about twelve years back had he ceased to embrace her frequently.

The chest was broad and ample; the lungs, nowise fungous, adhered, especially on the right side, by fibrous bands to the ribs. They were much loaded with blood, as we find them in cases of peripneumony, so that until the blood was squeezed out they looked rather blackish. Shortly before his death I had observed that the face was livid, and he suffered from difficult breathing and orthopnœa. This was the reason why the axillæ and chest continued to retain their heat long after his death: this and other signs that present themselves in cases of death from suffocation were observed in the body.

We judged, indeed, that he had died suffocated, through inability to breathe, and this view was confirmed by all the physicians present, and reported to the King. When the blood was expressed, and the lungs were wiped, their substance was beheld of a white and almost milky hue.

The heart was large, and thick, and fibrous, and contained a considerable quantity of adhering fat, both in its circumference and over its septum. The blood in the heart, of a black colour, was dilute, and scarcely coagulated; in the right ventricle alone some small clots were discovered.

In raising the sternum, the cartilages of the ribs were not found harder or converted into bone in any greater degree than they are in ordinary men; on the contrary, they were soft and flexible.

The intestines were perfectly sound, fleshy, and strong, and so was the stomach: the small intestines presented several constrictions, like rings, and were muscular. Whence it came that, by day or night, observing no rules or regular times for eating, he was ready to discuss any kind of eatable that was at hand; his ordinary diet consisting of sub-rancid cheese, and milk in every form, coarse and hard bread, and small drink, generally sour whey. On this sorry fare, but living in his home, free from care, did this poor man attain to such length of days. He even ate something about midnight shortly before his death.

The kidneys were bedded in fat, and in themselves sufficiently healthy; on their anterior aspects, however, they contained several small watery abscesses or serous collections, one of which, the size of a hen’s egg, containing a yellow fluid in a proper cyst, had made a rounded depression in the substance of the kidney. To this some were disposed to ascribe the suppression of urine under which the old man had laboured shortly before his death; whilst others, and with greater show of likelihood, ascribed it to the great regurgitation of serum upon the lungs.

There was no appearance of stone either in the kidneys or bladder.

The mesentery was loaded with fat, and the colon, with the omentum, which was likewise fat, was attached to the liver, near the fundus of the gall-bladder; in like manner the colon was adherent from this point posteriorly with the peritoneum.

The viscera were healthy; they only looked somewhat white externally, as they would have done had they been parboiled; internally they were (like the blood,) of the colour of dark gore.

The spleen was very small, scarcely equalling one of the kidneys in size.

All the internal parts, in a word, appeared so healthy, that had nothing happened to interfere with the old man’s habits of life, he might perhaps have escaped paying the debt due to nature for some little time longer.

The cause of death seemed fairly referrible to a sudden change in the non-naturals, the chief mischief being connected with the change of air, which through the whole course of life had been inhaled of perfect purity,—light, cool, and mobile, whereby the præcordia and lungs were more freely ventilated and cooled; but in this great advantage, in this grand cherisher of life this city is especially destitute; a city whose grand characteristic is an immense concourse of men and animals, and where ditches abound, and filth and offal lie scattered about, to say nothing of the smoke engendered by the general use of sulphureous coal as fuel, whereby the air is at all times rendered heavy, but much more so in the autumn than at any other season. Such an atmosphere could not have been found otherwise than insalubrious to one coming from the open, sunny and healthy region of Salop; it must have been especially so to one already aged and infirm.

And then for one hitherto used to live on food unvaried in kind, and very simple in its nature, to be set at a table loaded with variety of viands, and tempted not only to eat more than wont, but to partake of strong drink, it must needs fall out that the functions of all the natural organs would become deranged. Whence the stomach at length failing, and the excretions long retained, the work of concoction proceeding languidly, the liver getting loaded, the blood stagnating in the veins, the spirits frozen, the heart, the source of life, oppressed, the lungs infarcted, and made impervious to the ambient air, the general habit rendered more compact, so that it could no longer exhale or perspire—no wonder that the soul, little content with such a prison, took its flight.

The brain was healthy, very firm and hard to the touch; hence, shortly before his death, although he had been blind for twenty years, he heard extremely well, understood all that was said to him, answered immediately to questions, and had perfect apprehension of any matter in hand; he was also accustomed to walk about, slightly supported between two persons. His memory, however, was greatly impaired, so that he scarcely recollected anything of what had happened to him when he was a young man, nothing of public incidents, or of the kings or nobles who had made a figure, or of the wars or troubles of his earlier life, or of the manners of society, or of the prices of things—in a word, of any of the ordinary incidents which men are wont to retain in their memories. He only recollected the events of the last few years. Nevertheless, he was accustomed, even in his hundred and thirtieth year, to engage lustily in every kind of agricultural labour, whereby he earned his bread, and he had even then the strength required to thrash the corn.

LETTERS.