The use of the veins that pass through the neck of the womb, is to replenish it with blood and vigour, that so, as the moisture is consumed by the heat engendered by sexual intercourse, it may be renewed by those vessels; but their chief business is to convey nutriment to the womb.
The womb has many properties belonging to it: first, the retention of the impregnated egg, and this is conception, properly so called; secondly, to cherish and nourish it, until Nature has fully formed the child, and brought it to perfection, and then it operates strongly in expelling the child, when the time of its remaining has expired, becoming dilated in an extraordinary manner and so perfectly removed from the senses that they cannot injuriously affect it, retaining within itself a power and strength to eject the foetus, unless it be rendered deficient by any accident; and in such a case
remedies must be applied by skilful hands to strengthen it, and enable it to perform its functions; directions for which will be given in the second book.
The use of the preparing vessels is this; the arteries convey the blood to the testicles; some part of it is absorbed in nourishing them, and in the production of these little bladders (which resemble eggs in every particular), through which the vasa preparantia run, and which are absorbed in them; and the function of the veins is to bring back whatever blood remains from the above mentioned use. The vessels of this kind are much shorter in women than in men, because they are nearer to the testicles; this defect is, however, made good by the many intricate windings to which those vessels are subject; for they divide themselves into two branches of different size in the middle and the larger one passes to the testicles.
The stones in women are very useful, for where they are defective, the work of generation is at an end. For though those bladders which are on the outer surface contain no seed, as the followers of Galen and Hippocrates wrongly believed, yet they contain several eggs, generally twenty in each testicle; one of which being impregnated by the animated part of the man's seed in the act of copulation, descends
through the oviducts into the womb, and thus in due course of time becomes a living child.
CHAPTER XVI
Of the Organs of Generation in Man.