The Author of Nature has placed the womb in the belly, that the heat might always be maintained by the warmth of the parts surrounding it; it is, therefore, seated in the middle of the hypogastrium (or lower parts of the belly between the bladder and the belly, or right gut) by which also it is defended from any hurt through the hardness of the bones, and it is placed in the lower part of the belly for the convenience of copulation, and of a birth being thrust out at full time.
It is of a figure almost round, inclining somewhat to an oblong, in part resembling a pear; for being broad at the bottom, it gradually terminates in the point of the orifice which is narrow.
The length, breadth and thickness of the womb differ according to the age and disposition of the body. For in virgins not ripe it is very small in all its dimensions, but in women whose terms flow in great quantities, and such as frequently use copulation, it is much larger, and if they have had children, it is larger in them than in such as have had none; but in women of a good stature and well shaped, it is (as I have
said before), from the entry of the privy parts to the bottom of the womb usually about eight inches; but the length of the body of the womb alone, does not exceed three; the breadth thereof is near about the same, and of the thickness of the little finger, when the womb is not pregnant, but when the woman is with child, it becomes of a prodigious greatness, and the nearer she is to delivery, the more the womb is extended.
It is not without reason then, that nature (or the God of Nature) has made the womb of a membranous substance; for thereby it does the easier open to conceive, is gradually dilated by the growth of the foetus or young one, and is afterwards contracted or closed again, to thrust forth both it and the after-burden, and then to retire to its primitive seat. Hence also it is enabled to expel any noxious humours, which may sometimes happen to be contained within it.
Before I have done with the womb, which is the field of generation, and ought, therefore, to be the more particularly taken care of (for as the seeds of plants can produce no plants, nor sprig unless grown in ground proper to excite and awaken their vegetative virtue so likewise the seed of man, though potentially containing all the parts of the child, would never produce so
admissible an effect, if it were not cast into that fruitful field of nature, the womb) I shall proceed to a more particular description of its parts, and the uses for which nature has designed them.
The womb, then, is composed of various similar parts, that is of membranes, veins, arteries and nerves. Its membranes are two and they compose the principal parts of the body, the outermost of which ariseth from the peritoneum or caul, and is very thin, without it is smooth, but within equal, that it may the better cleave to the womb, as it is fleshier and thicker than anything else we meet with within the body, when the woman is not pregnant, and is interwoven with all sorts of fibres or small strings that it may the better suffer the extension of the child, and the water caused during pregnancy, and also that it may the easier close again after delivery.
The veins and arteries proceed both from the hypogastric and the spermatic vessels, of which I shall speak by and by; all these are inserted and terminated in the proper membranes of the womb. The arteries supply it with food and nourishment, which being brought together in too great a quantity, sweats through the substance of it, and distils as it were a dew at the bottom of the cavity; from thence proceed
the terms in ripe virgins, and the blood which nourisheth the embryo in breeding women. The branches which issue from the spermatic vessels, are inserted on each side of the bottom of the womb, and are much less than those which proceed from the hypogastrics, those being greater and bedewing the whole substance of it. There are some other small vessels, which arising the one from the other are conducted to the internal orifice, and by these, those that are pregnant purge away the superfluity of the terms when they happen to have more than is used in the nourishment of the infant: by which means nature has taken so much care of the womb, that during pregnancy it shall not be obliged to open itself for passing away those excrementitious humours, which, should it be forced to do, might often endanger abortion.