EXERCISE THE SIXTY-EIGHTH.
Of what takes place in the month of October.
Repeated dissections performed in the course of the month of October, both before the rutting season was over and after it had passed, never enabled me to discover any blood or semen, or a trace of anything else, either in the body of the uterus or in its cornua. The uterus was only a little larger, and somewhat thicker; and the caruncles were more tumid and florid, and, when strongly pressed with the finger, discharged small drops of blood, much in the manner in which a little watery milk can be squeezed from the nipples of a woman in the fourth month of her pregnancy. In one or two does, indeed, I found a green and ichorous matter, like an abscess, filling the cavity of the uterus, which was preternaturally extenuated; in other respects these animals were healthy, and in as good condition as others which I examined at the same time.
Towards the end of October and beginning of November, the rutting season being now ended, and the females separating themselves from the males, the uterus begins (in some sooner, in others later) to shrink in size, and the walls of its internal cavity, inflated in appearance, to bulge out; for where the cells existed formerly there are now certain globular masses projecting internally, which nearly fill the whole cavity, by which the sides are brought into mutual contact, and almost agglutinated, as it seems, so that there is no interval between them. Even as we have seen the lips of boys who, in robbing a hive, had been stung in the mouth, swollen and enlarged, so that the oral aperture was much contracted, even so does the internal surface of the uterus in the doe enlarge, and become filled with a soft and pulpy substance, like the matter of the brain, that fills its cavity and involves the caruncles, which, though not larger than before, look whiter, and as if they had been steeped in hot water, much as the nurse’s nipple appears immediately after the infant has quitted it. And now I have not found it possible by any compression to force blood out of the caruncles as before.
Nothing can be softer, smoother, more delicate, than the inner aspect of the uterus thus raised into tubers. It rivals the ventricles of the brain in softness, so that without the information of the eye we should scarcely perceive by the finger that we were touching anything. When the abdomen is laid open immediately after the death of the animal, I have frequently seen the uterus affected with a wavy and creeping motion, such as is perceived in the lower part of a slug or snail whilst it is moving, as if the uterus were an animal within an animal, and possessed a proper and independent motion. I have frequently observed a movement of the same kind as that just described in the intestines, whilst engaged in vivisections; and indeed such a motion can both be seen and felt in the bodies of dogs and rabbits whilst they are alive and uninjured. I have also observed a corresponding motion in the testes and scrotum of men; and I have even known women upon whom, in their eagerness for offspring, such palpitations have imposed. But whether the uterus in hysterical females, by ascending, descending, and twisting, experiences any such motion or not, I cannot take upon me to declare; and whether the brain, in its actions and conceptions, moves in anything of a similar manner or not, though a point difficult of investigation, I am inclined to look upon as one by no means unworthy of being attempted.
Shortly afterwards, the tubercular elevations of the inner surface of the uterus that have been mentioned begin to shrink; it is as if, losing a quantity of moisture, they became less plump. In some instances; indeed, though rarely, I have observed something like purulent matter adhering to them, such as is usually seen on the surface of wounds and ulcers when they are digested, as it is said, they pour out smooth and homogeneous pus. When I first saw this matter, I doubted whether it was the semen of the male or not, or a substance concocted from its purer portion. But as it was only in exceedingly rare instances that I met with such matter, and as twenty days had then passed since the doe had had any intercourse with the buck, and farther, as the matter was not viscid and tenacious, or spumous, such as the seminal fluid presents itself to us, but rather friable, purulent looking, and inclining to yellow, I came to the conclusion that it was the effect of accident, a sweat or exudation in consequence of violent exercise previous to death; just as in a catarrh the thinner defluxion of the nose is by and by changed into a thicker mucus.
Having frequently shown this alteration in the uterus to his majesty the king as the first indication of pregnancy, and satisfied him at the same time that there was nothing in the shape of semen or conception to be found in the cavity of the organ, and he had spoken of this as an extraordinary fact to several about him, a discussion at length arose: the keepers and huntsmen asserted at first that it was but an argument of a tardy conception occasioned by the want of rain. But by and by, when they saw the rutting season pass away, I still continuing to maintain that things were in the same state, they began to say that I was both deceived myself and had misled the king, and that there must of necessity be something of the conception to be found in the uterus. These men, however, when I got them to bring their own eyes to the inquiry, soon gave up the point. The physicians, nevertheless, held it among their αδύνατα—their impossibilities—that any conception should ever be formed without the presence of the semen masculinum, or some trace remaining of a fertile intercourse within the cavity of the womb.
That this important question might be the more satisfactorily settled in all time to come, his highness the king ordered about a dozen does to be separated from the bucks towards the beginning of October, and secluded in the inclosure, which is called the course, at Hampton Court, because the animal placed there has no means of escape from the dogs let loose upon it. Now that no one might say the animals thus secluded retained any of the semen received from the last connexions with the male, I dissected several of them before the rutting season had passed, and ascertained that no seminal fluid remained in the uterus, although the others were found to be pregnant in consequence of the preceding intercourse—impregnated by a kind of contagion as it appears—and duly produced their fawns at the proper time.
In the dog, rabbit, and several other animals, I have found nothing in the uterus for several days after intercourse. I therefore regard it as demonstrated that after fertile intercourse among viviparous as well as oviparous animals, there are no remains in the uterus either of the semen of the male or female emitted in the act, nothing produced by any mixture of these two fluids, as medical writers maintain, nothing of the menstrual blood present as ‘matter’ in the way Aristotle will have it; in a word, that there is not necessarily even a trace of the conception to be seen immediately after a fruitful union of the sexes. It is not true, consequently, that in a prolific connexion there must be any prepared matter in the uterus which the semen masculinum, acting as a coagulating agent, should congeal, concoct, and fashion, or bring into a positive generative act, or, by drying its outer surface, include in membranes. Nothing certainly is to be seen within the uterus of the doe for a great number of days, namely, from the middle of September up to the 12th of November.
It appears moreover that all females do not shed seminal fluid into the uterus during intercourse; that there is no trace either of seminal fluid or menstrual blood in the uterus of the hind or doe, and many other viviparous animals. But as to what it is which is shed by women of warmer temperament no less than by men during intercourse, accompanied with failure of the powers and voluptuous sensations; whether it be necessary to fecundation, whether it come from the testes femininæ, and whether it be semen and prolific, is discussed by us elsewhere.
And whilst I speak of these matters, let gentle minds forgive me, if, recalling the irreparable injuries I have suffered, I here give vent to a sigh. This is the cause of my sorrow:—whilst in attendance on his majesty the king during our late troubles and more than civil wars, not only with the permission but by command of the Parliament, certain rapacious hands stripped not only my house of all its furniture, but what is subject of far greater regret with me, my enemies abstracted from my museum the fruits of many years of toil. Whence it has come to pass that many observations, particularly on the generation of insects, have perished, with detriment, I venture to say, to the republic of letters.