The Female Physician / Containing all the diseases incident to that sex, in virgins, wives, and widows; together with their causes and symptoms, their degrees of danger, and respective methods of prevention and cure: to which is added, the whole art of new improv'd midwifery; comprehending the necessary qualifications of a midwife, and particular directions for laying women, in all cases of difficult and preternatural births; together with the diet and regimen of both the mother and child.

by John Maubray

CHAP. IX.
Of the WOMB.

I Say this is that Body, which the Learned Great Men of all Ages have esteem’d and look’d upon as the most wonderful Miracle of Nature, not only because of its singular Substance and Structure, but also of its peculiar Qualities and Faculties.

AS to the Substance and Structure, I have before observed in Chap. 6. of this Section, that it is singularly composed, of an innumerable Multitude of Fibrous Vessels and Muscular Parts; which being All most curiously interwoven, are admirably form’d together in its Constitution.

BUT how particular soever I have been on this Head, in Chap. 5, and 6. I must resume this Topick here, and add, that the Womb, and its Vagina or Neck, are closely join’d together: For it terminates in a Point near its Orifice, intrudes itself into the Vagina, and hangs so down, that in Women not with Child, and sometimes also in the first Months of Pregnancy, This sharp Point may be perceiv’d by the Touch.

AND how closely soever this Orifice of the Womb is shut after Conception or during Pregnancy; yet in a BIRTH it is so expanded, that the Womb and Vagina both seem to have but One and the same Cavity, like a Bag of equal Dimensions; there being then no Difference perceivable between that Orifice and the Vagina, excepting that the VAGINA is Softer and Thinner.

THE Womb may be otherwise aptly compar’d to the Earth; because the same Degree of Affinity that the Earth has to the Seed of Plants, the Womb bears to the Seed of Men: It being the very Secundary Cause in the Constitution of the Human Conception; not indeed the Instrumental only, but also the Active Cause: For whereas the Instrument takes Motion from, and operates by Virtue of Another, the Womb only acts of itself and operates by Virtue of its own Active Faculties.

BUT more particularly, the Womb has sundry proper Actions in this Constitution, which are peculiarly dependent of, and accordingly discharged by Itself only; and therefore it is not the sole or pure Instrumental Agent. But the Reason that I call it the Secundary or Disponent, not the Primary Cause, in constituting the Foetus, is, because the Actions of the Womb do not precisely terminate in this Constitution, but chiefly in disposing the Causes constituting the Man. And as (I think) there are Eight such Actions belonging to the Womb, I shall undertake to define them all particularly in a few Words. And,

I. THE FIRST Action of the Womb is, that by its attractive Faculty, it may allure the Masculine Seed infus’d by Coition into the Fund of its Capacity, after the same manner as a famishing Stomach snatches at the Victuals by the Gullet from the Mouth of the Eater.

II. THE SECOND is like unto the FIRST, and consists in attracting (after the same manner) the Muliebrian Seed from the Vessels of the Testicles, into the same Cavity.