Q. Why have not men as great paps and breasts as women? A. Because men have not monthly terms, and therefore have no vessel deputed for them.
Q. Whether are great, small or middle-sized paps best for children to suck? A. In great ones the heat is dispersed, and there is no good digestion of the milk; but in small ones the power and force is strong, because a virtue united is strongest, and by consequence there is a good digestion of the milk.
Q. Why do the paps of young women begin to grow about 13 or 15 years of age? A. Because then the flowers have no course to the teats, by which the young one is nourished, but follow their ordinary course, and therefore wax soft.
Q. Why hath a woman who is pregnant of a boy, the right pap harder than the left? A. Because the male child is conceived in the right side of the mother: and therefore the flowers do run to the right pap and make it hard.
Q. Why doth it show weakness of the child, when the milk doth drop out of the paps before the woman is delivered? A. Because the milk is the proper nutriment of the child in the womb of the mother; therefore if the milk run out, it is a token that the child is not nourished, and consequently is weak.
Q. Why doth the hardness of the paps betoken the health of the child in the womb? A. Because the flowers are converted into milk, and that milk doth sufficiently nourish the child, and thereby strength is signified.
Q. Why are women’s paps hard when they be pregnant, and soft at other times? A. Because they swell then, and are puffed up; and the great moisture which proceeds from the flowers doth run into the paps, which at other seasons remaineth in the matrix or womb, and is expelled by the place deputed for that end.
Q. By what means doth the milk of the paps come to the matrix or womb? A. There is a certain knitting and coupling of the paps with the womb, and there are certain veins which the midwives do cut in the time of the birth of the child, and by those veins the milk flows in at the navel of the child, and so it receives nourishment by the navel.
Q. Why is it a sign of a male child in the womb, when the milk that runneth out of a woman’s breast is thick, and not much, and of a female when it is thin? A. Because a woman that goeth with a boy, hath a great heat in her, which doth perfect the milk and make it thick; but she who goes with a girl hath not so much heat, and therefore the milk is undigested, imperfect, watery, and thin, and will swim above the water if it be put into it.
Q. Why is the milk white, seeing the flowers are red, of which it is engendered? A. Because blood which is well purged and concocted becomes white, as appeareth in flesh whose proper colour is red, and being boiled is white. Also, because every humour which is engendered of the body, is made like unto that part in colour where it is engendered, as near as it can be; but because the flesh of the paps is white, therefore the colour of the milk is white.