2. After conception, women suffer throughout their whole body, and their sight becomes dim, and they are afflicted with headache. In some, these symptoms occur very soon, as early as the tenth day; in others they are delayed, in proportion as they have an abundance or deficiency of superfluous matter in their bodies. Nausea and vomiting often seize upon them, and on those especially in whom the purifications become stagnant, and do not yet fly to the mammæ. Some women suffer at the commencement of pregnancy, and others in the more advanced stages, when the fœtus begins to grow. Retention of urine also frequently attacks them at last.
3. Those that are pregnant with a male fœtus, usually pass through the time more easily, and retain a better colour throughout. If a female is conceived, the contrary is the case; for they are generally more discoloured, and suffer more during the period of gestation. In many cases the legs swell, and a swollen condition of the flesh is also common. In some women, however, the condition is contrary. Pregnant women are apt to have all sorts of fancies, which change very rapidly. Some persons call this longing. These fancies are strongest when a female is conceived, and there is but little pleasure in their gratification. In a few women the condition of the body is better during pregnancy; they suffer most when the hair of the fœtus begins to grow. Pregnant women lose the hair which grows on the parts that are hairy at birth, while it becomes more thick upon the parts on which it appears subsequent to birth.
4. A male fœtus usually moves more freely in the womb than a female, and the parturition is not so long. If a female, the parturition is slower. The pain in the birth of female children is continuous, and dull; in the birth of males it is sharp, and far more severe. Those who, before parturition, have sexual intercourse, suffer less in the process. Sometimes women seem to suffer, not from any pain of their own, but from the turning of the head of the child; and this appears to be the commencement of the pain. Other animals have a single exact period for parturition, for one time is appointed for them all. The human subject alone varies in this particular, for the period of gestation is seven, eight, or nine months, or ten at the outside, though some have even advanced as far as the eleventh month.
5. If any are born before the seventh month, they never live. Those of seven months are the first that are developed, but these are usually weakly, wherefore, also, they wrap them in wool. Many of these infants have the passages, as the ears and nostrils, imperforate. As they grow, however, they assume a proper form, and many of them survive. In Egypt, and some other places, where the women suffer little pain in parturition, and where they bear many children with ease, those even at the end of eight months are capable of living, even although they should be monstrous; but in such places children born in the eighth month may survive and be brought up. In Greece, however, few of them survive, and most of them perish; and people suspect that if any of them survive, the exact period of conception must have been mistaken by the mother.
6. Women suffer most in the fourth and eighth month, and if the fœtus dies in the fourth or eighth month, they usually die also; so that not only children born in the eighth month often perish, but their mothers also perish with them. In the same way, the period of conception probably is mistaken by those who have been pregnant more than eleven months; for in these cases the beginning of the conception escapes the notice of females, for frequently after the uterus has been distended with flatulence, women have copulated and conceived, and supposed that the former condition in which they observed the usual symptoms, was the commencement of gestation.
Chapter V.
1. The human subject also differs from other animals, as to the number of the perfect offspring produced at a birth. For the human subject differs both from animals which produce but one, and those which produce many; for, generally speaking, and, in most cases, women have but one child at a time, though cases of twins occur frequently, and in many places, as in Egypt, three or four at a birth have been known in some particular places, as I have observed before. Five at a birth are the most that have been produced. This has been observed to take place in many cases, but in one case only have twenty been produced at four births, for five were born each time, and many of them were reared. In other animals, if the twins are male and female, there is no more difficulty in rearing and preserving them, than if they were both of the same sex. In the human subject there are few cases of twins surviving, when one was male and the other female.
2. The human female and the mare copulate after conception more than any other creatures, for all other females, when they have conceived, fly from the males, except those which, like the hare, become pregnant a second time during gestation. But the mare, having once conceived, does not form a second fœtus, but generally produces a single foal. In the human subject it happens sometimes, though rarely. Those which are conceived a long while afterwards never come to perfection, but, from the pain which they cause, destroy the original fœtus; and a case has occurred in which twelve imperfect embryos have been produced at one time. If the second conception take place soon after the first, they bear and produce the fœtus, as if it were a twin. This, they say, was the case with Iphicles and Hercules.
3. The possibility of the case is manifest, for an adulteress has been known to produce one child like her husband, and another like her paramour; and a case has occurred of a woman having conceived twins, and then conceived a third child upon them; and when the proper time came, the twins were born perfect, the other was only a fœtus of five months old, which died immediately: and in another case, a woman produced, first of all, a fœtus of seven months old, and then twins, perfectly developed; the former perished, but the latter survived. And some women have conceived at the same time as they miscarried, and have ejected one fœtus while they bore the other. In most females, who have cohabited after the eighth month after conception, the child has been born filled with a shining mucous-like substance, and has often appeared full of the food which has been eaten by the mother; and if she has fed upon food more than usually salt, the child has been born without nails.