The Works of William Harvey M.D. Translated from the Latin with a life of the author (part 5 of 6)

The Works of William Harvey M.D. Translated from the Latin with a life of the author (part 5 of 6)

In like manner, as the pulsating vesicles serve as instruments for the motion of the blood, and the heart in its entire structure does the same, (as I have shown in the work on the Motion of the blood,) urging the blood in a ceaseless round through every part of the body, we see that the blood must exist before the heart, both in the order of generation and of nature and essence. For the blood uses the heart as an instrument, and moreover, when engendered it continues to nourish the organ by means of the coronary arteries, distributing heat, spirits, and life to it through their ramifications.

We shall have further occasion to show from an entire series of anatomical observations, how this rule of Aristotle in respect of the true priority of the parts is borne out. Meantime we shall see how he himself succeeds in duly inferring the causes of priority in conformity with his rule.

“After the prime part--viz. the heart--is engendered,” he says, “the internal parts are produced before the external ones, the superior before the inferior; for the lower parts exist for the sake of the superior, and that they may serve as instruments, after the manner of the seeds of vegetables, which produce roots sooner than branches.”

Nature, however, follows no such order in generation; nor is the instance quoted invariably applicable; for in beans, peas, and other leguminous seeds, in acorns, also, and in grain, it is easy to see that the stem shoots upwards and the root downwards from the same germ; and onions and other bulbous plants send off stalks before they strike root.

He then subjoins another cause of this order, viz.: “That as nature does nothing in vain or superfluously, it follows that she makes nothing either sooner or later than the use she has for it requires.” That is to say, those parts are first engendered whose use or function is first required; and some are begun at an earlier period because a longer time is requisite to bring them to perfection; and that so they may be in the same state of forwardness at birth as those that are more rapidly produced. Just as the cook, having to dress certain articles for supper, which by reason of their hardness are done with difficulty, or require gentle boiling for a great length of time, these he puts on the first, and only turns subsequently to those that are prepared more quickly and with less expenditure of heat; and further, as he makes ready the articles that are to come on in the first course first of all, and those that are to be presented in the second course afterwards; so also does nature in the generation of animals only proceed at a later period to the construction of the soft and moist and fleshy parts, as requiring but a short time for their concoction and formation, whilst the hard parts, such as the bones, as requiring ample evaporation and abundant drying, and their matter long remaining inconcoct, she proceeds to fashion almost from the very beginning. “And the same thing obtains in the brain,” he adds, “which, large in quantity and exceedingly moist at first, is by and by better concocted and condensed, so that the brain as well as the eye diminishes in size. The head is therefore very large at first, in comparison with the rest of the body, which it far surpasses because of the brain and the eyes, and the large quantity of moisture contained in them. These parts, nevertheless, are among the last to be perfected, for the brain acquires consistence with difficulty, and it is long before it is freed from cold and moisture in any animal, and especially in man. The sinciput, too, is consolidated the last, the bones here being quite soft when the infant sees the light.”

He gives another reason, viz. because the parts are formed of different kinds of matter: “Every more excellent part, the sharer in the highest principle is, farther, engendered from the most highly concocted, the purest and first nutriment; the other needful parts, produced for the sake of the former, from the worse and excrementitious remainder. For nature, like the sage head of a family, is wont to throw away nothing that may be turned to any useful purpose. But he still regulates his household so that the best food shall be given to his children, the more indifferent to his menials, the worst to the animals. As then, man’s growth being complete and mind having been superadded, (in other words, and, as I interpret the passage, adult man having acquired sense and prudence,) things are ordered in this way, so does nature at the period of production even compose the flesh and the other more sensitive parts of the purest matter. Of the excrementitious remainder she makes the bones, sinews, hair, nails, and other parts of the same constitution. And this is the reason why this is done last of all, when nature has an abundant supply of recrementitious material.” Our author then goes on to speak of “a twofold order of aliment:” “one for nutrition, another for growth;” “the nutritive is the one which supplies existence to the whole and to the parts; the augmentative, that which causes increase to the bulk.”

This is in accordance with what we find in the egg, where the albumen supplies a kind of purer aliment adapted to the nutrition of the embryo in its earlier stages, and the yelk affords the material for the growth of the chick and pullet. The thinner albumen, moreover, as we have seen, is used in fashioning the first and more noble parts; the thicker albumen and the yelk, again, are employed in nourishing and making these to grow, and further in forming the less important parts of the body. “For,” he says, “the sinews, too, are produced in the same way as the bones, and from the same material, viz.: the seminal and nutritive excrementitious matter. But the nails, hair, horns, beak, and spurs of birds, and all other things of the same description, are engendered of the adventitious and nutritive aliment, which is obtained both from the mother and from without.” And then he gives a reason why man, whilst other animals are endowed by nature with defensive and offensive arms, is born naked and defenceless, which is this: that whilst in the lower animals these parts are formed of remainders or excrements, man is compounded of a purer material, “which contains too small a quantity of inconcoct and earthy matter.”

Thus far have we followed Aristotle on the subject of ‘The Order in Generation,’ the whole of which seems to be referrible to one principle, viz.: the perfection of nature, which in her works does nothing in vain and has no short-comings, but still does that in the best manner which was best to be done. Hence in generation no part would either precede or follow, did she prefer producing them altogether, viz.: in circumstances where she acts freely and by election; for sometimes she works under compulsion, as it were, and beside her purpose, as when through deficiency or superabundance of material, or through some defect in her instruments, or is hindered of her ends by external injuries. And thus it occasionally happens that the final parts are formed before the instrumental parts,--understanding by final parts, those that use others as instruments.

And as some of the parts are genital, nature making use of them in the generation of other parts, as the means of removing obstacles the presence of which would interfere with the due progress of the work of reproduction, and others exist for other special ends; it therefore happens that for the disposition of material, and other requisites, some parts are variously engendered before others, some of them being begun earlier but completed at a later period, some being both begun and perfected at an earlier period, and others being begun together but perfected at different times subsequently. And then the same order is not observed in the generation of all animals, but this is variously altered; and in some there is nothing like succession, but all the parts are begun and perfected simultaneously, by metamorphosis, to wit, as has been already stated. Hence it follows, in fine, that the primogenate part must be of such a nature as to contain both the beginning and the end, and be that for whose sake all the rest is made, namely, the living principle, or soul, and that which is the potential and genital cause of this, the heart, or in our view the blood, which we regard as the prime seat of the soul, as the source and perennial centre of life, as the generative heat, and indeed as the inherent heat; in a word, the heart is the first efficient of the whole of the instrumental parts that are produced for the ends of the soul, and used by it as instruments. The heart, according to Aristotle, I say, is that for which all the parts of animals are made, and it is at the same time that which is at once the origin and fashioner of them all.

EXERCISE THE FIFTY-SIXTH.

Of the order of the parts in generation as it appears from observation.

That we may now propose our own views of the order of the parts in generation as we have gathered it from our observations, it appears that the whole business of generation in all animals may be divided into two periods, or connected with two structures: the ovum, i. e. the conception and seed, or that, whatever it be, which in spontaneous productions corresponds to the seed, whether with Fernelius it be called “the native celestial heat in the primogenial moisture,” or with Aristotle, “the vital heat included in moisture.” For the conception in viviparous animals, as we have said, is analogous to the seed and fruit of plants; in the same way as it is to the egg of oviparous creatures; to worms in spontaneously engendered animals, or to certain vesicles fruitful by the vital warmth of their included moisture. In each and all of these the same things inhere which might with propriety lead to their being called seeds; they are all bodies, to wit, from which and by which, as previously existing matter, artificer and organ, the whole of an animal body is primarily engendered and produced.

The other structure is the embryo produced from the seed or conception. For both the matter and the moving and efficient cause, and the instruments needful to the operation, must necessarily precede operation of any and every kind.

We have already examined the structure of the egg. Now the embryo to which it gives birth, in so far as this can be made out by observation and dissection, particularly among the more perfect animals with [red] blood, appears to be perfected by four principal degrees or processes, which we reduce to as many orders, in harmony with the various epochs in generation; and we shall demonstrate that what transpires in the egg also takes place in every conception or seed.

The first process is that of the primogenial and genital part, viz. the blood with its receptacles, in other words, the heart and its vessels.

And this part is first engendered for two principal reasons: 1st, because it is the principal part which uses all the rest as instruments, and for whose sake the other parts are formed; and, 2d, because it is the prime genital part, the origin and author of the rest. The part, in a word, in which inhere both the principle whence motion is derived, and the end of that motion, is obviously father and sovereign.

In the generation of this first part, which in the egg is accomplished in the course of the fourth day, although I have not been able to observe any order or sequence, inasmuch as the whole of its elements,--the blood, the vessels, and the pulsating vesicles--appear simultaneously, I have nevertheless imagined, as I have said, that the blood exists before the pulse, because, according to nature’s laws, it must be antecedent to its receptacles. For the substance and structure of the heart, namely, the conical mass with its auricles and ventricles, as they are produced long subsequently along with the other viscera, so must they be referred to the same class of parts as these, namely, the third.

In the production of the circulating system the veins are sooner seen than the arteries; such at least is our conclusion.

The second process, which begins after the fourth day, is indicated by a certain concrescence, which I designate vermiculum--worm or maggot; for it has the life and obscure motions of a maggot; and as it concretes into a mucous matter, it divides into two parts, the larger and superior of which is seen to be conglobed, and divided, as it were, into thin vesicles,--the brain, the cerebellum, and the two eyes; the less, again, constituting the carina, arises over the vena cava and extends in the line of its direction.

In the genesis of the head, the eyes are first perceived; by and by a white point makes its appearance in the situation of the beak, and the slime drying around it, it becomes invested with a membrane.

The outline of the rest of the body follows about the same period. First, from the carina something like the sides of a ship are seen to arise; the parts having an uniform consistence in the beginning, but the ribs being afterwards prefigured by means of extremely fine white lines. The instruments of locomotion next arise--the legs and wings; and the carina and the extremities adnate to it are then distinguished into muscles, bones, and articulations.

These two rudiments of the head and trunk appear simultaneously, but as they grow and advance to perfection subsequently, the trunk increases and acquires its shape much more speedily than the head; so that this, which in the first instance exceeded the whole trunk in size, is now relatively much smaller. And the same thing occurs in regard to the human embryo.

The same disparity also takes place between the trunk and the extremities. In the human embryo, from the time when it is not longer than the nail of the little finger, till it is of the size of a frog or mouse, the arms are so short that the extremities of the fingers could not extend across the breast, and the legs are so short that were they reflected on the abdomen they would not reach the umbilicus.

The proportion of the body to the extremities in children after their birth continues excessive until they begin to stand and run. Infants, therefore, resemble dwarfs in the beginning, and they creep about like quadrupeds, attempting progressive motion with the assistance of all their extremities; but they cannot stand erect until the length of the leg and thigh together exceeds the length of the rest of the body. And so it happens, that when they first attempt to walk, they move with the body prone, like the quadruped, and can scarcely rise so erect as the common dunghill fowl.

And so it happens that among adult men the long-legged--they who have longer legs, and especially longer thighs--are better walkers, runners, and leapers than square-built, compact men.

In this second process many actions of the formative faculty are observed following each other in regular order, (in the same way as we see one wheel moving another in automata, and other pieces of mechanism,) and all arising from the same mucaginous and similar matter. Not indeed in the manner that some natural philosophers would have it when they say, “that like is carried to its like.” We are rather to maintain that parts are moved, not changing their places, but remaining and undergoing change in hardness, softness, colour, &c., whence the diversities between similar parts; those things appearing in act which were before in power.[297] The extremities, spine, and rest of the body, namely, are formed, grow, and acquire outline and complexion together; the extremities, comprising bones, muscles, tendons, and cartilages, all of which on their first appearance were similar and homogeneous, become distinguished in their progress, and, connected together, compose organs, by whose mutual continuity the whole body is constituted. In like manner, the membrane growing around the head, the brain is composed, and the lustrous eyes receive their polish out of a perfectly limpid fluid.

That is to say, nature sustains and augments the several parts by the same nourishment with which she fashioned them at first, and not, as many opine, with any diversity of aliment and particles similar to each particular structure. As she is increasing the mucaginous mass or maggot, like a potter she first divides her material, and then indicates the head and trunk and extremities; like a painter, she first sketches the parts in outline, and then fills them in with colours; or like the shipbuilder, who first lays down his keel by way of foundation, and upon this raises the ribs and roof or deck: even as he builds his vessel does nature fashion the trunk of the body and add the extremities. And in this work she orders all the variety of similar parts--the bones, cartilages, membranes, muscles, tendons, nerves, &c.--from the same primary jelly or mucus. For thick filaments are produced in the first instance, and these by and by are brought to resemble cords; then they are rendered cartilaginous and spinous; and, lastly, they are hardened and concocted into bones. In the same way the thicker membrane which invests the brain is first cartilaginous and then bony, whilst the thinner membrane merely consolidates into the pericranium and integument. In similar order flesh and nerve from soft mucus are confirmed into muscle, tendon, and ligament; the brain and cerebellum are condensed out of a perfectly limpid water into a firm coagulum; for the brain of infants, before the bones of the head have closed, is soft and diffluent, and has no greater consistence than the curd of milk.

The third process is that of the viscera, the formation of which in the chick takes place after the trunk is cast in outline, or about the sixth or seventh day,--the liver, lungs, kidneys, cone and ventricles of the heart, and intestines, all become visible nearly at the same moment; they appear to arise from the veins, and to be connected with them in the same way as fungi grow upon the bark of trees. They are, as I have already said, gelatinous, white, and bloodless, until they take on their proper functions. The stomach and intestines are first discovered as white and tortuous filaments extending lengthwise through the abdomen; along with these the mouth appears, from which a continuous canal extends to the anus, and connects the superior with the inferior parts. The organs of generation likewise appear about the same time.

Up to this period all the viscera, the intestines, and the heart itself inclusive, are excluded from the cavities of the body and hang pendulous without, attached as it were to the veins. The trunk of the body presents itself, in fact, like a boat undecked or a house without a roof, the anterior walls of the thorax and abdomen not being yet extant to close these cavities.

But as soon as the sternum is fashioned the heart enters into the chest as into a dwelling which it had built and arranged for itself; and there, like the tutelary genius, it enters on the government of the surrounding mansion, which it inhabits with its ministering servants the lungs. The liver and stomach are by and by included within the hypochondria, and the intestines are finally surrounded by the abdominal parietes. And this is the reason wherefore without dissection the heart can no longer be seen pulsating in the hen’s egg after the tenth day of incubation.

About this epoch the point of the beak and the nails appear of a fine white colour; a quantity of chylous matter presents itself in the stomach; a little excrement is also observed in the intestine, and the liver being now begun, some greenish bile is perceived; facts from which it clearly appears that there is another digestion and preparation of nutriment going on besides that which takes place by the branches of the umbilical veins; and it is reasonable matter of doubt how the bile, the excrementitious matter of the second digestion, can be separated by the instrumentality of the liver from the other humours, when we see it produced at the same time as this organ.

In the order now indicated are the internal organs generated universally; in all the animals which I have dissected, particularly the more perfect ones, and man himself, I have found them produced in the same manner: in these, in the course of the second, third, and fourth month, the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, spleen, and intestines present themselves inchoate and increasing, and all alike of the same white colour which belongs to the body at large. Wherefore these early days are not improperly spoken of as the days when the embryo is in the milk; for with the exception of the veins, particularly those of the umbilicus, everything is as it were spermatic in appearance.

I am of opinion that the umbilical arteries arise after the veins of the same name, because the arteries are scarcely to be discovered in the course of the first month, and take their rise from the branches that descend to either lower extremity. I do not believe, therefore, that they exist until that part of the body whence they proceed is formed. The umbilical veins, on the contrary, are conspicuous long before any part of the body is begun.

What I have now said I have derived from numerous dissections of human embryos of almost every size; for I have had them for inspection from the time they were like tadpoles, till they were seven or eight fingers’ breadth in length, and from thence onwards to the full time. I have examined them more particularly, however, through the second, third, and fourth months, in the course of which the greatest number of changes take place, and the order of development is seen with greatest clearness.

In the human embryo, then, of the age of two months, what we have spoken of as taking place in the “second process,” is observed to occur. For I rather think that during the first month there is scarcely anything of the conception in the uterus--at all events, I have never been able to discover anything. But the first month past, I have repeatedly seen conceptions thrown off, and similar to the one which Hippocrates mentions as having been voided by the female pipe-player, of the size of a pheasant’s or pigeon’s egg. Such conceptions resemble an egg without its shell; they are, namely, of an oval figure; the thicker membrane or chorion with which they are surrounded, however, is seen to be covered with a white mucor externally, particularly towards the larger end; internally it is smooth and shining, and is filled with limpid and sluggish water--it contains nothing else.

In the course of the second month I have frequently seen an ovum of this description, or somewhat larger, thrown off with the symptoms of abortion, viz. ichorous lochia; the ovum being sometimes entire, at other times burst, and covered with bloody coagula. Within it was smooth and slippery; it was covered with adhering blood without. Its form was that which I have just described. In some of these aborted ova, I have discovered embryos, in others I could find none. The embryo, when present, was of the length of the little finger-nail, and in shape like a little frog, save that the head was exceedingly large and the extremities very short, like a tadpole in the month of June, when it gets its extremities, loses its tail, and assumes the form of a frog. The whole substance was white, and so soft and mucilaginous, that unless immersed in clear water, it was impossible to handle it. The face was the same as that of the embryo of one of the lower animals--the dog or cat, for instance, without lips, the mouth gaping, and extending from ear to ear.

Many women, whose conceptions, like the wind-eggs of fowls, are barren and without an embryo, miscarry in the third month.

I have occasionally examined aborted ova of this age, of the size of a goose’s egg, which contained embryos distinct in all their parts, but misshapen. The head, eyes, and extremities were distinct, but the muscles were indistinct; there were no bones, but certain white lines in their situations, and as it seemed, soft cartilages. The substance of the heart was extremely white, and consisted of two ventricles of like size and thickness of walls, forming a cone with a double apex, which might be compared to a small twin-kernel nut. The liver was very small and of the general white colour. Through the whole of this time, i. e. during the first three months, there is scarcely any appearance of a placenta or uterine cake.

In every conception of this description I have seen, I have always found a surrounding membrane containing a large quantity of watery fluid, between which and the body of the embryo, suspended by its middle by means of a long and twisted umbilical cord, there is such disproportion, that it is impossible to regard this liquid as either sweat or urine; it seems far more probable that like the colliquament in the hen’s egg, it is a fluid destined by nature for the nourishment of the fœtus. Nor was there any indication to be discovered of these conceptions or ova having been connected with the uterus; there was only on the external surface of their larger extremity a greater appearance of thickening and wrinkling, as if the rudiments of the future placenta had existed there.

These conceptions, therefore, appear to me in the light of ova, which are merely cherished within the uterus, and, like the egg in the uterus of the fowl, grow by their own inherent powers.

In the fourth month, however, it is wonderful to find what rapid strides the fœtus has made: from the length of the thumb it has now grown to be a span long. All the members, too, are distinct and are tinged with blood; the bones and muscles can be distinguished; there are vestiges of the nails, and the fœtus now begins to move lustily. The head, however, is excessively large; the face without lips, cheeks, and nose; the gape of the mouth is enormous, and the tongue lies in its middle; the eyes are small, without lids to cover them; the middle integument of the regions of the forehead and sinciput is not yet cartilaginous, far less bony; but the occiput is somewhat firm and in some sort cartilaginous, indicating that the skull already begins to acquire solidity.

The organs of generation have now made their appearance, but the testes are contained within the abdomen, in the situation of the female uterus, the scrotum still remaining empty. The female organs are yet imperfect, and the uterus with its tubes resembles the two-horned uterus of the lamb.

The placenta, of larger size, and now attached to the uterus, comprises nearly one half of the entire conception, and presented itself to my eye as a fleshy or fungous excrescence of the womb, so firmly was its gibbous portion connected all around with the uterine walls, which had now grown to greater thickness. The branches of the umbilical vessels struck into the placenta like the roots of a tree into the ground, and by their means was the conception now, for the first time, connected with the uterus.

The brain presented itself as a large and soft coagulum, full of ample vessels. The ventricles of the heart were of equal capacity, and their walls of the same thickness. In the thorax, and covered by the ribs, three cavities, nearly of the same dimensions, were perceived; of these the lowest was occupied by the lungs, which are full of blood, and of the same colour as the liver and kidneys; the middle cavity was filled by the heart and pericardium; the superior cavity, again, was possessed by the gland called the thymus, which is now of very ample size.

In the stomach there was some chyle discovered, not very different in character from the fluid in which the embryo swam. It also contained some white curdled matter, not unlike the mucous sordes which the nurse washes particularly from between the folds of the skin of new-born infants. In the upper part of the intestines there was a small quantity of excrementitious or chylous matter; the lower bowels contained meconium. In the urinary bladder there was urine, and in the gall bladder bile. The intestinum cœcum, that appendix of the colon, was empty as in the adult, and apparently superfluous, not as in the lower animals--the hog, horse, hare, constituting as it were another stomach. The omentum, or apron, floated over the intestines at large like a thin and transparent veil or cloud.

The kidneys at this epoch are not yet formed into a smooth and continuous rounded mass, as in the adult, but are compacted of numerous smaller masses, as we see them in the calf and sturgeon, as if there were a renal globule or nipple placed at the extremity of each division of the ureter, from the orifice of which the urine distilled. Over the kidneys two bodies, first observed by Eustachius, are discovered, very abundantly supplied with blood, so that their veins, which anatomists designate as venæ adiposæ, are not much smaller than the emulgents themselves. The liver and spleen, according to their several proportions, are equally full of blood.

I may here observe, by the way, that in every strong and healthy human fœtus we everywhere discover milk; it is particularly abundant in the thymus gland, though it is also found in the pancreas, through the whole of the mesentery, and in certain lacteal veins and glands, as it seems, situated between the divisions of the mesenteric vessels. Moreover, it can be pressed and indeed sometimes flows spontaneously from the breasts of newly-bom infants, and nurses imagine that this is beneficial to the infant.

And it clearly appears that this fluid, which abounds in the ovum, is no excrementitious matter thrown off by the embryo, nothing like urine or sweat, because its relative quantity is diminished as the period of parturition approaches, when the fœtus is of course larger, and, as it consumes a greater quantity of nutriment, accumulates excrementitious matter more abundantly than it did in the first months of pregnancy. Let it be added, that the bladder is at this time distended with urine. For my own part I have never been able to discover that conduit for the urine, from the bladder to the umbilicus, which anatomists describe under the name of urachus; I have, on the contrary, frequently seen urine escaping by the penis, but never by any urachus, when the bladder was pressed upon with the hand.

So much for what I have observed with reference to the order of the parts in the development of the human fœtus.

In the fourth and last process the parts of the lowest state and order are produced, those, namely, that do not exist as needful to the being or to the maintenance of the individual, but only as defences against external injury, as ornaments, or as weapons of offence.

The outermost part of all, the skin, with its several appendages,--cuticle, hair, wool, feathers, scales, shells, claws, hooves, and other items of the same description, may be regarded as the principal means of defence or protection. And it is well devised by nature, who, indeed, never does aught amiss, that these parts are the last to be engendered, inasmuch as they could never be of use or avail as defences until the animal was born. The common domestic pullet is therefore born covered with down only, not with feathers, like certain other birds which have to be speedily prepared for flight, because it has to seek its food on foot, not on the wing, and by active running about hither and thither. In like manner the young of ducks and geese, which feed swimming, have their feathers and wings perfected at a later period than their feet and legs. It is otherwise with swallows, however, which have to fly sooner than to walk, because they feed on the wing.

The down of the pullet begins to appear after the fourteenth day, the fœtus being already perfect in all its parts. When the feathers first show themselves, they are in the guise of points within the skin, but by and by the feathers project, like plants from the ground, increase in length, become unfolded, invest the whole body, and protect it against the inclemencies of the atmosphere.

Feathers differ from quills in form, use, place of growth, and order of production. The pullet is feathered before it has any quills, for the quill-feathers only grow in the wings and tail, and also spring more deeply, from the very lowest part of the integument, or even from the periosteum, and serve essentially as instruments of motion; the feathers again arise superficially from the skin, and are everywhere present as means of protection.

“Nails, hair, horn, and the like,” says Aristotle,[298] “are engendered from the skin; whence it happens that they change colour with the skin; for the white and black and particoloured are so in consequence of the colour of the skin whence they arise.” In the bird, however, this is not so; for whatever the colour of the feathers, the skin is still never otherwise than of one tint, viz., white. And then the same feather or quill is frequently seen of different and often brilliant colours in different parts for the ornament of the creature.

In the human fœtus the skin and all the parts connected with it are in like manner perfected the last of all. In the earlier periods, consequently, we find neither lips, cheeks, external ears, eyelids, nor nose; and the last part to grow together is the upper lip in the course of the middle line of the body.

Man comes into the world naked and unarmed, as if nature had destined him for a social creature, and ordained him to live under equitable laws and in peace; as if she had desired that he should be guided by reason rather than be driven by force; therefore did she endow him with understanding, and furnish him with hands, that he might himself contrive what was necessary to his clothing and protection. To those animals to which nature has given vast strength, she has also presented weapons in harmony with their powers; to those that are not thus vigorous, she has given ingenuity, cunning, and singular dexterity in avoiding injury.

Ornaments of all kinds, such as tufts, crests, combs, wattles, brilliant plumage, and the like, of which some vain creatures seem not a little proud, to say nothing of such offensive weapons as teeth, horns, spurs, and other implements employed in combat, are more frequently and remarkably conferred upon the male than the female. And it is not uninteresting to remark, that many of these ornaments or weapons are most conspicuous in the male at that epoch when the females come into season, and burn with desire of engendering. And whilst in the young they are still absent, in the aged they also fail as being no longer wanted.

Our common cock, whose pugnacious qualities are well known, so soon as he comes to his strength and is possessed of the faculty of engendering, is distinguished by his spurs, and ornamented with his comb and beautiful feathers, by which he charms his mates to the rites of Venus, and is furnished for the combat with other males, the subject of dispute being no empty or vainglorious matter, but the perpetuation of the stock in this line or in that; as if nature had intended that he who could best defend himself and his, should be preferred to others for the continuance of the kind. And indeed all animals which are better furnished with weapons of offence, and more warlike than others, fall out and fight, either in defence of their young, of their nests or dens, or of their prey; but more than all for the possession of their females. Once vanquished, they yield up possession of these, lay aside their strut and haughty demeanour, and, crest-fallen and submissive, they seem to consume with grief; the victor, on the contrary, who has gained possession of the females by his prowess, exults and boastfully proclaims the glory of his conquest.

Nor is this ornamenting anything adventitious and for a season only; it is a lasting and special gift of nature, who has not been studious to deck out animals, and especially birds only, but has also thrown an infinite variety of beautiful dyes over the lowly and insensate herbs and flowers.

EXERCISE THE FIFTY-SEVENTH.

Of certain paradoxes and problems to be considered in connexion with this subject.

Thus far have we spoken of the order of generation, whereby the differences between those creatures that are engendered by metamorphosis and those that are developed by epigenesis, as well as between those that are said to proceed from a worm and those that arise from an egg, have been made to appear. The latter are partly incorporated from a prepared matter, and are nourished and increased from a certain remaining matter; the former are incorporated from the whole of the matter present; the latter grow and are formed simultaneously, and after their birth continue to wax in size and finally attain maturity; the former increase at once, and from a grub or caterpillar grow into an aurelia, and are then produced, consummately formed, as butterflies, moths, and the like. Wherefore Aristotle, as Fabricius[299] observes: “As he assigns a sort of twofold nature to the egg, and a twofold egg in this kind, so does he assert a twofold action and a twofold animal engendered. For,” he proceeds, “from the first eggs, which are the primordia of generation, a worm is constantly produced; viz.: from the eggs of flies, ants, bees, silkworms, &c., in which some fluid is contained, and from the whole of which fluid the worm is engendered; but from the second eggs, formed by the worms themselves, butterflies are engendered and disclosed, viz.: flying animals contained in a shell, or follicle, or egg, which shell giving way the winged creature escapes; precisely as Aristotle[300] has it where he speaks of the egg of the locust.” Finally, whilst the higher animals produced from eggs are perfected by a succession of parts, the lower creatures that arise in this way, or that are formed by metamorphosis, are produced at one effort, as it were, and entire. And in the same way are engendered both those creatures that are said to arise spontaneously, by chance or accident, and derive their first matter or take their origin from putrefaction, filth, excrement, dew, or the parts of plants and animals, as well as those that arise congenerately from the semen of animals. Because this is common to all living creatures, viz.: that they derive their origin either from semen or eggs, whether this semen have proceeded from others of the same kind, or have come by chance or something else. For what sometimes happens in art occasionally occurs in nature also; those things, namely, take place by chance or accident which otherwise are brought about by art. Of this Aristotle[301] quotes health as an illustration. And the thing is not different as respects the generation, in so far as it is from seed, of certain animals: their semina are either present by accident, or they proceed from an univocal agent of the same kind. For even in fortuitous semina there is an inherent motive principle of generation, which procreates from itself and of itself; and this is the same as that which is found in the semina of congenerative animals,--a power, to wit, of forming a living creature. But of this matter we shall have more to say shortly.

From what has just been said, however, several paradoxes present themselves for consideration. For when we see the cicatricula enlarging in the egg, the colliquament concocted and prepared, and a variety of other particulars all tending, not without foresight, to the development of the embryo, before the first rudiment or the merest particle of this is conspicuous, what should hinder us from believing that the calidum innatum and the vegetative soul of the chick are in existence before the chick itself? For what is competent to produce the effects and acts of life, except their efficient cause and principle, heat, namely, and the faculty of the vegetative soul? Therefore it would seem that the soul was not the act of the organic body possessing life in potentia; for we regard the chick with its appropriate form as the consequence of such an act. But where can we suppose the form and vital principle of the chick to inhere save in the chick itself? unless indeed we admitted a separation of forms and conceded a certain metamorphosis.

Now this appears most obviously where the same animal lives, as Aristotle has it, by or under a succession of forms, for example, a caterpillar, a chrysalis, a butterfly. For it is of necessity the same efficient, nutrient, and conservative principle that possesses each of these, although under different forms; unless we allow that there is one vital principle in the youth, another in the man, a third in the aged individual, or maintain that the forms of the grub and caterpillar are the same as those of the silkworm and butterfly. Aristotle has entered very fully into this subject, and we shall ourselves have more to say on it immediately.

It appears further paradoxical to maintain that the blood is produced, and moves to and fro, and is imbued with vital spirits, before any sanguiferous or locomotive organs are in existence. Neither is it less new and unheard-of to assert, that sensation and motion belong to the fœtus before the brain is formed; for the fœtus moves, contracting and unfolding itself, when there is nothing more than a little limpid water in the place of the brain.

Moreover, the body is nourished and increases before the organs appropriated to digestion, viz. the stomach and abdominal viscera, are formed. Sanguification, too, which is entitled the second digestion, is perfect before the first, or chylification, which takes place in the stomach, is begun. The excrementitious products of the first and second digestions, namely, excrement in the intestines, urine and bile in the urinary and gall bladder, are contemporaneous with the existence of the concocting organs themselves. Lastly, not only is there a soul or vital principle present in the vegetative part, but even before this there is inherent mind, foresight, and understanding, which from the very commencement to the being and perfect formation of the chick, dispose and order and take up all things requisite, moulding them in the new being, with consummate art, into the form and likeness of its parents.

In reference to this subject of family likeness, we may be permitted to inquire as to the reason why the offspring should at one time bear a stronger resemblance to the father, at another to the mother, and, at a third, to progenitors, both maternal and paternal, further removed? particularly in cases where at one bout, and at the same moment, several ova are fecundated. And this too is a remarkable fact, that virtues and vices, marks and moles, and even particular dispositions to disease are transmitted by parents to their offspring; and that while some inherit in this way, all do not. Among our poultry some are courageous, and pugnaciously inclined, and will sooner die than yield and flee from an adversary; their descendants, once or twice removed, however, unless they have come of equally well-bred parents, gradually lose this quality; according to the adage, “the brave are begotten by the brave.” In various other species of animals, and particularly in the human family, a certain nobility of race is observed; numerous qualities, in fact, both of mind and body, are derived by hereditary descent.

I have frequently wondered how it should happen that the offspring, mixed in so many particulars of its structure or constitution, with the stamp of both parents so obviously upon it, in so many parts, should still escape all mixture in the organs of generation; that it should so uniformly prove either male or female, so very rarely an hermaphrodite.

Lastly, many things are present before they appear, and some are begun among the very first which are completed among the very last, such as the eyes, the organs of generation, and the beak.

Several doubts and difficulties have thence arisen as to the principality and relative dignity of the several members, in which they who are fond of such things have displayed their ingenuity. Among the number: whether the heart gives life and virtue to the blood; or, rather, the blood to the heart. Whether the blood be extant for the sake of the body as matter, nourishment, and instrument; or, on the contrary, the body and its parts are the cause of the blood, and constituted for the sake of the vital principle which especially inheres in it. In like manner, whether the auricles or the ventricles of the heart are the chief, the auricles being the first to live and pulsate, the last to die. Further, whether the left ventricle, which in man is of greater length, and is also surrounded with thicker and more fleshy walls, and is regarded as the source of the spirits, be hotter, more spirituous, excitable, and excellent, than the right, which contains a larger quantity of blood, and is the last to become unstrung by death; in which the blood of the dying accumulates, congeals, and is deprived of life and spirit; to which, moreover, as to a fountain head, the first umbilical veins bring their blood, and from which they themselves derive their origin.

So much appears from careful observation of the order observed in the production of the parts, and certain other points that follow as deductions from these, and do not a little militate against the commonly received physiological doctrines, viz.: since it is manifest that sensation and motion exist before the brain, all sensation and motion do not proceed from the brain; from our history it is clearly ascertained that sense and movement inhere in the very first drop of blood produced in the egg, before there is a vestige of the body. The first scaffolding or rudiment of the body, too, which we have said is merely mucilaginous, before any of the extremities are visible, and when the brain is nothing more than a limpid fluid, if lightly pricked, will move obscurely, will contract and twist itself like a worm or caterpillar, so that it is very evidently possessed of sensation.

There are yet other arguments deduced from sense and motion whence we should infer that the brain was not so much the first principle of the body, in the way the medical writers maintain, as the heart, agreeably to Aristotle’s view.

The motions and actions which physicians style natural, because they take place involuntarily, and we can neither prevent nor moderate, accelerate nor retard them by our will, and they therefore do not depend on the brain, still do not occur entirely without causing sensation, but proclaim themselves subject to sense, inasmuch as they are aroused, called forth, and changed thereby. When the heart, for example, is affected with palpitation, tremor, lipothymia, syncope, and with great variety in the extent, rapidity, and order or rhythm of its pulsations, we do not hesitate to ascribe these to morbific causes implicating, deranging its sensation. For whatever by its divers movements strives against irritations and troubles must necessarily be endowed with sensation.

The stomach and bowels, disturbed by the presence of vitiated humours, are affected with ructus, flatus, vomiting, and diarrhœa; and as it lies not in our power either to provoke or to restrain their motions, neither are we aware of any sensation dependent on the brain which should arouse the parts in question to motions of the kind.

It is truly wonderful to observe the effect of taking a solution of antimony, which we neither distinguish by the taste, nor find any inconvenience from, whether in the swallowing or the rejection. Nevertheless there is a certain discriminating sense in the stomach which distinguishes what is hurtful from what is useful, and by which vomiting is induced.

Nay, the flesh itself readily distinguishes a poisoned wound from one that is not poisoned, and on receipt of the former contracts and condenses itself, whereby phlegmonous tumours are produced, as we find in connexion with the stings of bees, gnats, and spiders.

I have myself, for experiment’s sake, occasionally pricked my hand with a clean needle, and then having rubbed the same needle on the teeth of a spider, I have pricked my hand in another place. I could not by my simple sensation perceive any difference between the two punctures; nevertheless there was a capacity in the skin to distinguish the one from the other; for the part pricked with the envenomed needle immediately contracted into a tubercle, and by and by became red, and hot, and inflamed, as if it collected and girded itself up for a contest with the poison for its overthrow.

The sensations which accompany affections of the uterus, such as twisting, decubitus, prolapse, ascent, suffocation, &c., and other inconveniences and irritations, do not depend on the brain or on common sensation; yet neither are these to be presumed as happening without all consciousness. For that which is wholly without sense is not seen to be irritated by any means, neither can it be stimulated to motion or action of any kind. Nor have we any other means of distinguishing between an animate and sentient thing and one that is dead and senseless than the motion excited by some other irritating cause or thing, which as it incessantly follows, so does it also argue sensation.

But we shall have an opportunity of speaking farther of this matter when we discuss the actions and uses of the brain. Respect for our predecessors and for antiquity at large inclines us to defend their conclusions to the extent that love of truth will allow. Nor do I think it becoming in us to neglect and make little of their labours and conclusions who bore the torch that has lighted us to the shrine of philosophy. I am, therefore, of opinion that we should conclude in this way: we have consciousness in ourselves of five principal senses, by which we judge of external objects; but we do not feel with the same sense by means of which we are conscious that we feel--seeing with our eyes, we still do not know by them that we see, but by another sense or sensitive organ, namely, the internal common sensation or common sensorium, by which we examine those things that reach us through each of the external sensoria, and distinguish that which is white from that which is sweet or hard. Now this sensorium commune to which the species or impressions of all the external instruments of sensation are referred, is obviously the brain, which along with its nerves and the external organs annexed, is held and esteemed to be the adequate instrument of sensation. And this brain is like a sensitive root to which a variety of fibres tend, one of which sees, another hears, a third touches, and a fourth and a fifth smell and taste.

But as there are some actions and motions the government or direction of which is not dependent on the brain, and which are therefore called natural, so also is it to be concluded that there is a certain sense or form of touch which is not referred to the common sensorium, nor in any way communicated to the brain, so that we do not perceive by this sense that we feel; but, as happens to those who are deranged in mind, or who are agitated to such a degree by violent passion that they feel no pain, and pay no regard to the impressions made on their senses, so must we believe it to be with this sense, which we therefore distinguish from the proper animal sense. Now such a sense do we observe in zoophytes or plant-animals, in sponges, the sensitive plant, &c.

Wherefore, as many animals are endowed with both sense and motion without having a common sensorium or brain, such as earthworms, caterpillars of various kinds, chrysalides, &c., so also do certain natural actions take place in the embryo and even in ourselves without the agency of the brain, and a certain sensation takes place without consciousness. And as medical writers teach that the natural differ from the animal actions, so by parity of reason does the natural sense of touch differ from the animal sense of touch,--it constitutes, in a word, another species of touch; and whilst the one is communicated to the common sensorium, the other is not so communicated.

Further, it is one thing for a muscle to be contracted and moved, and another for it by regulated contractions and relaxations to perform any movement, such as progression or prehension. The muscles or organs of motion, when affected with spasms or convulsions from an irritating cause, are assuredly moved no otherwise than the decapitated cock or hen, which is agitated with many convulsive movements of its legs and wings, but all confused and without a purpose, because the controlling power of the brain has been taken away:--common sensation has disappeared, under the controlling influence of which these motions were formerly coordinated to progression by walking or to flight.

We therefore conceive the fact to be that all the natural motions proceed from the power of the heart, and depend on it; the spontaneous motions, however, and those that complete any motion which physicians entitle an animal motion, cannot be performed without the controlling influence of the brain and common sensation. For inasmuch as by this common sensation we are conscious of our perceptions, so also are we conscious that we move, and this whether the motion be regular or otherwise.

We have an excellent example of both of these kinds of motion in respiration. For the lungs, like the heart, are continually carried upwards and downwards by a natural movement, and are excited by any irritation to coughing and more frequent action; but they cannot form and regulate the voice, nor can singing be executed, without the assistance, and in some sort the command, of the sensorium commune.

But these matters will be more fully handled when we come to speak of the actions and uses of the brain, and to consider the vital principle or soul. So much we have thought fit to say by the way, that we might show the respect in which we hold our illustrious teachers, and our anxiety to carry them along with us in our labours.

EXERCISE THE FIFTY-EIGHTH.

Of the nutrition of the chick in ovo.

That the authority of the ancients is not to be rashly thrown off appears in this: it was formerly current doctrine, though many at the present day, Fabricius[302] among the number, reject it as a delusion and a foolish idea, that the embryo sucked in its mother’s womb. This idea nevertheless had Democritus, Epicurus, and Hippocrates for its supporters; and the father of physic contends for it on two principal grounds: “Unless the fœtus sucked,” he says,[303] “how should excrements be formed? or how should it know how to suck immediately after it is born?”

Now, whilst in other instances it is customary to swear by the bare statement of this ancient and most distinguished writer, his ipse dixit (ἀυτὸς ἔφη) sufficing, because he here makes an assertion contrary to the commonly received opinion, Fabricius not only denies the statement, but spurns the arguments in support of his conclusion. We, however, leave it to the judgment of skilful anatomists and learned physicians to say whether our observations on the generation of animals do not proclaim this opinion of Hippocrates to be not merely probable, but even necessary.

All admit that the fœtus in utero swims in the midst of an abundance of a watery fluid, which in our history of the egg we have spoken of as the colliquament, this fluid modern authorities regard as the sweat and excrement of the fœtus, and ascribe as its principal use the protection of the uterus against injury from the fœtus during any violent motion of the mother in running or leaping; and, on the other hand, the defence of the fœtus from injury through contact with neighbouring bones, or an external cause, particularly during the period when its limbs are still delicate and weak.

Fabricius[304] ascribes additional uses to this fluid, viz. “that it may moisten and lubricate all the parts around, and dispose the neck of the uterus to facile and speedy dilatation to the utmost extent; and all this is not less assisted by that thick, white, excrementitious matter of the third digestion, neglected by the ancients, which is unctuous and oily, and farther prevents the sweat, which may occasionally be secreted sharp and salt in quality, from excoriating the tender body of the fœtus.”

I readily acknowledge all the uses indicated, viz. that the tender fœtus may be secure against all sudden and violent movements of the mother, that he may ride safe in the “bat’s wings,” as they are called, and, surrounded with an abundance of water, that he may escape coming into contact with his mother’s sides, being restrained by the retinacular fluid on either hand: this circumambient fluid must certainly protect the body which floats in its middle from all external injury. But, as in many other instances, my observations compel me here to be of a different opinion from Fabricius. In the first place, I am by no means satisfied that this fluid is the sweat of the fœtus. And then I do not believe that the fluid serves those important purposes in parturition which he indicates; and much less that it is ever so sharp and saline that an unctuous covering was requisite to protect the fœtus from its erosive effects, particularly in those cases where there is already a thick covering of wool, or hair, or feathers. The fluid, in fact, has a pleasant taste, like that of watery milk, so that almost all viviparous animals lap it up, and cleanse their new-born progeny by licking them with their tongues, greedily swallowing the fluid, though none of them was ever seen to touch any of the excrements of their young.

Fabricius spoke of this fluid as saline and acrimonious, because he believed it to be sweat. But what inconvenience, I beseech you, were sweat to the chick, already covered with its feathers?--if indeed any one ever saw a chicken sweat. Nor do I think he could have said that the use of this fluid in the egg was, by its moistening and lubrifying qualities, to facilitate the birth of the chick; for the drier and older the shell of the egg, the more friable and fragile it becomes. Finally, were it the sweat of the embryo, or fœtus, it ought to be most abundant nearest the period of parturition: the larger the fœtus and the more food it consumes, the more sweat must it necessarily secrete. But shortly before the exclusion of the chick from the egg, namely, about the nineteenth or twentieth day, there is none of the fluid to be seen, because as the chick grows it is gradually taken up; so that if the thing be rightly viewed, the fluid in question ought rather to be regarded as nutriment than as excrement, particularly as he has said that the chick in the egg breathes, and lets its chirping be heard, which it certainly would not do were it surrounded with water.

But all experienced obstetricians know that the watery fluid of the secundines is of no great use either in lubricating the parts or in facilitating the progress of parturition in the way Fabricius would have it. For the parts surrounding the vulva are relaxed of themselves, and by a kind of proper maturity at the full time, without any assistance from the uterine waters; and particularly those that offer the greatest obstacles to the advance of the fœtus, namely, the ossa pubis and the os coccygis, to which the attention of the midwife is especially directed in assisting the woman in labour. For midwives are much less studious to anoint the soft parts with any emollient salves, lest they tear, than careful to pull the os coccygis outwards, a business in which, if the fingers do not suffice, they have recourse to the uterine speculum, applied by the hand of the experienced surgeon, an instrument having three sides or branches, one of which bearing on the os coccygis, the other two on the ossa pubis, the business of distension is effected by force. For the head of the child that is about to be born, when it makes the turn, and is forced downwards, relaxes and opens the os uteri; but coming down he will stick fast, and scarcely be brought forth if he chance to abut upon the point of the os coccygis, and immediately the case is one not without danger both to the child and mother. But nature’s intention was obviously to relax and soften all the parts concerned; and the attendant knows that when the uterine orifice is discovered in a soft and lax condition, by the finger introduced, it is an infallible sign that the delivery is at hand even though the waters have not broken. Indeed--and I do not speak without experience--if anything remains in the uterus for expulsion, either after delivery or at any other time, and the uterus make efforts to get rid of it, the orifice both descends lower and is found soft and relaxed. If the uterine orifice recedes, and is found somewhat hard after delivery, it is a sign of the woman’s restoration to health.

Taught by like experience, I assert that the ossa pubis frequently become loosened during labour, their cartilaginous connexion being softened, and the whole hypogastric region enlarged in the most miraculous manner, not, however, by any pouring out of watery fluids, but spontaneously, as ripe fruit gapes that the included seed may find an exit. The degree in which the coccyx may impede delivery, however, is apparent among quadrupeds having tails, which can neither bring forth, nor even discharge the excrement from their bowels, unless the tail be raised; if you but depress the tail with your hand, you prevent the exit of the dung.

Moreover, the most natural labour of all is held to be that in which the fœtus and afterbirth, the waters inclusive, or the ovum, is expelled entire. Now if the membranes have not given way, and the waters have not escaped, it comes to pass that the surrounding parts are more than usually distended and dilated by the labour pains, in consequence, to wit, of the entire and tense state of the membranes, by which it happens that the fœtus is produced more speedily, and with a less amount of effort, although with more suffering to the mother. In cases of this kind we have known women who were suffering much in their travail in consequence of the too great distension, immensely relieved by the rupture of the membranes and the sudden escape of the waters, the laceration being effected either with the nails of the midwife or the use of a pair of forceps.

Experienced midwives are farther aware that if the waters come away before the orifice of the uterus is duly dilated, the woman is apt to have a lingering time and a more difficult delivery, contrary to Fabricius’s notion of the waters having such paramount influence in softening and lubricating the parts.

Moreover, that the fluid which we have called colliquament is not the sweat of the fœtus is made obvious, both from the history of the egg and of the uterogestation of other animals: it is present before the fœtus is formed in any way, before there is a trace of it to be seen; and whilst it is still extremely small and entirely gelatinous, the quantity of water present is very great, so that it seems plainly impossible that so small a body should produce such a mass of excrementitious fluid.

It happens besides that the ramifications of the umbilical veins are distributed over and terminate upon the membrane which incloses this fluid, precisely as on the membranes of the albumen and yelk of the egg, a circumstance from which, and the thing being viewed as it is in fact, it appears to be clearly proclaimed that this fluid is rather to be regarded as food than as excrement.

To me, therefore, the opinion of Hippocrates appears more probable than that of Fabricius and other anatomists, who look on this liquid as sweat, and believe that it must prove detrimental to the fœtus. I am disposed, I say, to believe that the fluid with which the fœtus is surrounded may serve it for nourishment; that the thinner and purer portions of it, taken up by the umbilical veins, may serve for the constitution and increase of the first formed parts of the embryo; and that from the remainder or the milk, taken into the mouth by suction, passed on to the stomach by the act of deglutition, and there digested or chylified, and finally absorbed by the mesenteric veins, the new being continues to grow and be nourished. I am the more disposed to take this view from certain not impertinent arguments, which I shall proceed to state.

As soon as the embryo acquires a certain degree of perfection it moves its extremities, and begins to prove the actions of the organs destined to locomotion. Now I have seen the chick in ovo, surrounded with liquid, opening its mouth, and any fluid that thus gained access to the fauces must needs have been swallowed; for it is certain that whatever passes the root of the tongue and gains the top of the œsophagus, cannot be rejected by any animal with a less effort than that of vomiting. This fact is acted upon every day by veterinary practitioners, who in administering medicated drinks and pills or boluses to cattle, seize the tongue, and having put the article upon its root beyond the protuberant part, the animal cannot do otherwise than swallow it. And if we make the experiment ourselves, we find that a pill carried between the finger and thumb as far as the root of the tongue and there dropped, immediately the action of deglutition is excited, and unless vomiting be produced the pill is taken down. If the embryo swimming in the fluid in question, then, do but open his mouth, it is absolutely necessary that the fluid must reach the fauces; and if the creature then move other muscles, wherefore should we not believe that he also uses his throat in its appropriate office and swallows the fluid?

It is further quite certain that in the crop of the chick,--and the same thing occurs in reference to the stomach of other embryos--there is a certain matter having a colour, taste, and consistence, very similar to that of the liquid mentioned, and some of it in the stomach digested to a certain extent, like coagulated milk; and further, whilst we discover a kind of chyle in the upper intestines, we find the lower bowels full of stercoraceous excrements. In like manner we perceive the large intestines of the fœtuses of viviparous animals to contain excrements of the same description as those that distend them when they feed on milk. In the sheep and other bisulcated animals we even find scybala.

Towards the seventeenth day we find dung very obviously near the anus of the chick; and shortly before the extrusion I have seen the same matter expelled and contained within the membranes. Volcher Coiter, a careful and experienced dissector, states that he has observed the same thing.

Wherefore should we doubt, then, that the fœtus in utero sucks, and that chylopoiesis goes on in its stomach, when we find present both the principles and the recrementitious products of digestion?

And then, when we find the bladder both of the bile and the urine full of those excrements of the second digestion, wherefore should we not conclude that the first digestion, or chylopoiesis, has preceded?

The embryo, therefore seeks for and sucks in nourishment by the mouth; and you will readily believe that he does so if you rip him from his mother’s womb and instantly put a finger in his mouth; which Hippocrates thinks he would not seize had he not previously sucked whilst in the womb. For we are accustomed to see young infants trying various motions, making experiments, as it were, approaching everything, moving their limbs, attempting to walk, and uttering sounds, acts all of which when taught by repeated experience, they afterwards come to execute with readiness and precision. But the fœtus so soon as it is born, aye, before it is born, will suck; doubtless as it had done in the uterus long before. For I have found by experience that the child delayed in the birth, and before it has cried or breathed, will seize and suck a finger put into its mouth. A new-born infant, indeed, is more expert at sucking than an adult, or than he is himself if he have but lost the habit for a few days. For the infant does not suck by squeezing the nipple with his lips as we should, and by suction in the common acceptation; he rather seems as if he would swallow the nipple, drawing it wholly into his throat, and with the aid of his tongue and palate, and chewing, as it were, he milks his mother with more art and dexterity than an adult could practise. He therefore appears to have learned that by long custom, and before he saw the light, which we know full well he unlearns by a very brief discontinuance.

These and other observations of the same kind make it extremely probable that the chick in ovo is nourished in a twofold manner, namely, by the umbilical and by the mesenteric veins. By the former he imbibes a nourishment that is well nigh perfectly prepared, whence the first-formed parts are engendered and augmented; by the latter he receives chyle for the structure and growth of the other remaining parts.

But the reason is perhaps obscure why the same agent should perform the work of nutrition by means of the same matter in a variety of ways, since nature does nothing in vain. We shall therefore endeavour to explain this.

What is taken up by the umbilical veins is the purer and more limpid part; and the rest of the colliquament in which the fœtus swims is like crude milk, or milk deprived of its purer portion. The purer part does not require any of that ulterior concoction of which the remainder stands in need; and to undergo which it is taken into the stomach, where it is transmuted into chyle. Similar to this is the crude and watery milk which is found in the breasts immediately after parturition. The liquefied albumen of the egg, and the crude or watery milk of the mammæ seem to have in all respects the same colour, taste, and consistence. For the first flow of milk is serous and watery, and women are wont to express water from their breasts before the milk comes white, concocted, and perfect.

Just as the colliquament found in the crop of the chick is a kind of crude milk, whilst the same fluid discovered in the stomach is concocted, white, and curdled; so in viviparous animals, before the milk is concocted in the mammæ, a kind of dew and colliquament makes its appearance there, and the colliquament only puts on the semblance of milk after it has undergone concoction in the stomach. And so it happens, in Aristotle’s opinion, that the first and most essential parts are formed out of the purer and thinner portion of the colliquament, and are increased by the remaining more indifferent portion after it has undergone elaboration by a new digestion in the stomach. In the same way are the other less important parts developed and maintained. Thus has nature, like a fond and indulgent mother, been sedulous rather to provide superfluity, than to suffer any scarcity of things necessary. Or it might be said to be in conformity with reason to suppose that the fœtus, now grown more perfect, should also be nourished in a more perfect manner, by the mouth, to wit, and by a more perfect kind of aliment, rendered purer by having undergone the two antecedent digestions and been thereby freed from the two kinds of excrementitious matter. In the beginning and early stages, nourished by the ramifications of the umbilical veins, it leads in some sort the life of a plant; the body is then crude, white, and imperfect; like plants, too, it is motionless and impassive. As soon, however, as it begins by the mouth to partake of the same aliment farther elaborated, as if feeling a diviner influence, boasting a higher grade of vegetative existence, the gelatinous mass of the body is changed into flesh, the organs of motion are distinguished, the spirits are perfected, and motion begins; nor is it any longer nourished like a vegetable, by the roots, but, living the life of an animal, it is supported by the mouth.

EXERCISE THE FIFTY-NINTH.

Of the uses of the entire egg.

Having now gone through the several changes and processes which must take place in the hen’s egg, in order that it may produce a chick, Fabricius proceeds to consider the uses of the egg at large, and of its various parts; nor does he restrict himself to the hen’s egg, but condescends upon eggs in general. Among other things he inquires: wherefore some eggs are heterogeneous and composed of different elements; and others are homogeneous and similar? such as the eggs of insects, and those creatures that are engendered from the whole egg, viz. by metamorphosis, and are not engendered from one part of the egg, and nourished by another part.

I have no purpose myself of entering on a general consideration of eggs of all kinds and descriptions; I have not yet given the history of all, but only of the hen’s egg; so that I shall here limit myself to a survey of the uses of the common hen’s egg, keeping in view the end of all its actions, which is nothing less than the production and completion of a new being, as Fabricius has well and truly said.[305]

Among the points having reference to the whole egg, Fabricius speaks of the form, dimensions, and number of eggs. “The figure of the egg is round,” he says,[306] “in order that the mass of the chick may be stowed in the smallest possible space; for the same cause that God made the world round, namely, that it might embrace all things; and it is from this, as Galen conceives, that this figure is always felt to be most agreeable and consonant to nature. Further, as it has no angles exposed to injury from without, it is, therefore, the safest figure, and the one best adapted to effect the exclusion of the chick.” It had been well after such a preface to have assigned satisfactory causes why hen’s eggs are not spherical, like the eggs of fishes, worms and frogs, but oblong and pointed; to have shown what there is in them which hinders the presumed perfection of figure. Now to me the form of the egg has never appeared to have aught to do with the engenderment of the chick, but to be a mere accident; and to this conclusion I come the rather when I see such diversities in the shape of the eggs of different hens. They vary, in short, in conformity with the variety that obtains among the uteri of different fowls, in which, as in moulds, they receive their form.

Aristotle,[307] indeed, says that the longer-shaped eggs produce females, the rounder males. I have not made any experiments upon this point myself. But Pliny[308] asserts, in opposition to Aristotle, that the rounder eggs produce females, the others males. Now were there any certainty in such statements, either in one way or the other, some hens would always produce males, others always females, inasmuch as the eggs of the same hen are in many instances always of one figure, namely, either much rounded or acutely pointed. Horace[309] thought that the oblong eggs, as being the more perfect and better concocted, and therefore the better flavoured, produced males.

I willingly pass by the reasons alleged by Fabricius for the form of eggs, as being all irrelevant.

The size of an egg appears to bear a proportion to the size of the fœtus produced from it; large hens, too, certainly lay large eggs. The crocodile, however, lays eggs the size of those of the goose; nor does any animal attain to larger dimensions from a smaller beginning. It would seem, too, that the size of the egg and the quantity of matter it contained had some connexion with its fecundity, inasmuch as the very small eggs called centenines are all barren.

The number of eggs serves the same end as abundance of conceptions among viviparous animals--they secure the perpetuity of the species. Nature appears to have been particularly careful in providing a numerous offspring to those animals which, by reason of their pusillanimity or bodily weakness, hardly defend themselves against the attacks of others; she has counterbalanced the shortness of their own lives by the number of their progeny. “Nature,” says Pliny,[310] “has made the timid tribes among birds more fruitful than the bold ones.” All generation as it is instituted by nature for the sake of perpetuating species, so does it occur more frequently among those that are shorter-lived and more obnoxious to external injury lest their race should fail. Birds that are of stronger make, that prey upon other creatures, and therefore live more securely and for longer terms scarcely lay more than two eggs once a year. Pigeons, turtle and ring-doves, that lay but a couple of eggs, make up for the smallness of the number by the frequency of laying, for they will produce young as often as ten times in the course of a year. They therefore engender greatly although they do not produce many at a time.

EXERCISE THE SIXTIETH.

Of the uses of the yelk and albumen.

“An egg,” says Fabricius,[311] “properly so called, is composed of many parts, because it is the organ of the engenderer, and Galen everywhere insists on the constitution of an organ as implying multiplicity of parts.” But this view leads us to ask whether every egg must not be heterogeneous, seeing that every egg is organic? And every egg, indeed, even that of the fish and insect, appears to be composed of several different parts,--membranes, coverings, defences; nor is the included matter by any means without diversity of constitution in different parts.

Fabricius agrees farther, and correctly, with Galen, when he says:[312] “Some parts of the egg are the chief instruments of the actions that take place in it, others may be styled necessary,--without them no actions could take place; others exist that the action which takes place may be better performed; others, in fine, are destined for the safety and preservation of all of these.” But he is mistaken when he says: “If we speak of the prime action, which is the generation of the chick, the chief cause of this is the semen and the chalazæ, these two being the prime cause of the generation of the chick, the semen being the efficient cause, the chalaza the matter only.” Now according to the opinion of Aristotle, it must be allowed that that which generates is included in the egg; but Fabricius denies that the semen of the cock is contained in the egg.

Nor does he wander less wide of the mark when he speaks of the chalazæ as the matter from which, by the influence of the semen galli, the chick is incorporated. For the chick is not produced either from one or the other, nor yet from both of the chalazæ, as we have shown in our history. Neither is the generation of the chick effected by metamorphosis, nor by any new form assumed and division effected in the chalazæ, but by epigenesis, in the manner already explained. Nor are the chalazæ especially fecundated by the semen of the male bird, but the cicatricula rather, or the part which we have called the eye of the egg, from which, when it enlarges, the colliquament is produced, in and from which, subsequently, the blood, the veins, and the pulsating vesicles proceed, after which the whole body is gradually formed. Moreover, on his own admission, the semen of the cock never enters the uterus of the hen, and yet it fecundates not only the eggs that are already formed, but others that are yet to be produced.

Fabricius refers the albumen and vitellus to the second action of the egg, which is the nutrition and growth of the chick. “The vitellus and albumen,” he says,[313] “are in quantity commensurate with the perfect performance of this action, and with the due development and growth of the chick. The shell and membranes are therefore the safety of the whole of the egg as well as the security of its action. But the veins and arteries which carry nourishment are organs without which the action of the egg, in other words, the growth and nutrition of the chick, would not take place.” It is uncertain, however, whether the umbilical vessels of the embryo or the veins and arteries of the mother, whence the egg is increased, are here to be understood. For a like reason the uterus and incubation ought to be referred to this last class of actions.

We have to do, then, with the two fluids of the egg, the albumen and the vitellus; for these, before all the other parts, are formed for the use of the embryo, and in them is the second action of the egg especially conspicuous.

The egg of the common hen is of two colours internally, and consists of two fluids, severally distinct, separated by membranes, and in all probability of different natures, and therefore having different ends to serve, inasmuch as they are distinguished by different extensions of the umbilical veins, one of them proceeding to the white, another to the yelk. “The yelk and white of the egg are of opposite natures,” says Aristotle,[314] “not only in colour, but also in power. For the yelk is congealed by cold; the white is not congealed, but is rather liquefied; on the contrary, the white is coagulated by heat, the yelk is not coagulated, but remains soft, unless it be over-done, and is more condensed and dried by boiling than by roasting.” The vitellus getting heated during incubation, is rendered more moist; for it becomes like melted wax or tallow, whereby it also takes up more room. For as the embryo grows, the albumen is gradually taken up and becomes inspissated; but the yelk, even when the fœtus has attained perfection, appears scarcely to have diminished in size; it is only more diffluent and moist, even when the fœtus begins to have its abdomen closed in.

Aristotle[315] gives the following reason for the diversity: “Since the bird cannot perfect her offspring within herself, she produces it along with the aliment needful to its growth in the egg. Viviparous animals again prepare the food (milk) in another part of their body, namely, the breasts. Now nature has done the same thing in the egg; but otherwise than as is generally presumed, and as Alcmæon Crotoniates states it, for it is not the albumen but the vitellus which is the milk of the egg.”

For as the fœtus of a viviparous animal draws its nourishment from the uterus whilst it is connected with its mother, like a plant by its roots from the earth; but after birth, and when it has escaped from the womb, sucks milk from the breast, and thereby continues to wax in size and strength, the chick finds the analogue of both kinds of food in the egg. So that whilst in viviparous animals the uterus exists within the parent, in oviparous the parent may rather be said to exist within the uterus (the egg). For the egg is a kind of exposed and detached uterus, and in it are included in some sort vicarious mammæ. The chick in the egg, I say, is first nourished by albumen, but afterwards, when this is consumed, by the yelk or by milk. The umbilical vascular connexion with the albumen, therefore, when this fluid is used up, withers and is interrupted when the abdomen comes to be closed, and before the period of exclusion arrives, so that it leaves no trace of its existence behind it: in viviparous animals, on the contrary, the umbilical cord is permanent in all its parts up to the moment of birth. The other canal that extends to the vitellus, however, is taken up along with this matter into the abdomen, where being stored, it serves for the support of the delicate fœtus until its beak has acquired firmness enough to seize and bruise its food, and its stomach strength sufficient to comminute and digest it; just as the young of the viviparous animal lives upon milk from the mammæ of its mother, until it is provided with teeth by which it can masticate harder food. For the vitellus is as milk to the chick, as has been already said; and the bird’s egg, as it stands in lieu both of uterus and mammæ, is furnished with two fluids of different colours, the white and the yelk.

All admit this distinction of fluids. But I, as I have already said, distinguish two albumens in the egg, kept separate by an interposed membrane, the more external of which embraces the other within it, in the same way as the yelk is surrounded by the albumen in general. I have also insisted on the diverse nature of these albumens; distinguished both by situation and their surrounding membranes, they seem in like manner calculated for different uses. Both, however, are there for ends of nutrition, the outermost, as that to which the branches of the umbilical veins are earliest distributed, being first consumed, and then the inner and thicker portion; last of all the vitellus is attacked, and by it is the chick nourished, not only till it escapes from the shell but for some time afterwards.

But upon this point we shall have more to say below, when we come to speak of the manner in which the fœtuses of viviparous animals are developed, and at the same time demonstrate that these all derive their origin from eggs, and live by a twofold albuminous food in the womb. One of these is thinner, and contained within the ovum or conception; the other is obtained by the umbilical vessels from the placenta and uterine cotyledons. The fluid of the ovum resembles a dilute albumen in colour and consistence; it is a sluggish, pellucid liquid, in all respects similar to that which we have called the colliquament of the egg, in which the embryo swims, and on which it feeds by the mouth. The fluid which the fœtus obtains from the uterine placenta by the aid of the umbilical vessels is more dense and mucaginous, like the inspissated albumen. Whence it clearly appears that the fœtus in utero is no more nourished by its parent’s blood than is the suckling afterwards, or the chick in ovo; but that it is nourished by an albuminous matter concocted in the placenta, and not unlike white of egg.

Nor is the contemplation of the Divine Providence less useful than delightful when we see nature, in her work of evolving the fœtus, furnishing it with sustenance adapted to its varying ages and powers, now more easy, by and by more difficult of digestion. For as the fœtus acquires greater powers of digesting, so is it supplied with food that is successively thicker and harder. And the same thing may be observed in the milk of animals generally: when the young creature first sees the light the milk is thinner and more easy of concoction; but in the course of time, and with increased strength in the suckling, it becomes thicker, and is more abundantly stored with caseous matter. Those flabby and delicate women, therefore, who do not nurse their own children, but give them up to the breast of another, consult their health indifferently; for mercenary nurses being for the major part of more robust and hardy frames, and their milk consequently thicker, more caseous, and difficult of digestion, it frequently happens that milk of this kind given to the infants of such parents, particularly during the time of teething, is not well borne, but gives rise to crudities and diarrhœas, to griping, vomiting, fever, epilepsy, and other formidable diseases of the like nature.

What Fabricius says,[316] and strives to bolster up by certain reasonings, of the chalazæ standing for the matter of the chick, we have already thrown out in our history, and at the same time have made it manifest that the substance of the chick and its first rudiments were produced whilst the chalazæ were still entire and unchanged, and in a totally different situation.

Neither is it true, as he states,[317] “that the chalazæ, rendered fruitful by the semen of the cock, stand in the place of seed, and that from them the chick is produced.” Nor are the chalazæ, as he will have it,[318] “in colour, substance, and bodily properties so like seed, or bear so strong a resemblance to the embryo in a boiled egg, that we may rightly conceive all the parts designated spermatic to be thence engendered.” I am rather of opinion that the fluid which we have called colliquament, or the thinner portion of the albumen liquefied and concocted, is to be regarded as of the nature of seed, and, if the testimony of our eyes is to be credited, as a substitute for it.

The observation of this venerable old man is therefore unnecessary when he says,[319] “As the whole animal body is made up of two substances very different from one another, and even of opposite natures, viz. hot and cold--among the hot parts being included all those that are full of blood and of a red colour; among the cold all those that are exsanguine and white--these two orders of parts doubtless require a different and yet a like nourishment, if it be true that we are nourished by the same things of which we are made. The spermatic, white, and cold parts, therefore, require white and cold nourishment; the sanguineous, red, and hot parts, again, demand nourishment that is red and hot. And so is the cold white of the egg properly held to nourish the cold and white parts of the chick, and the hot and sanguine yelk regarded as a substitute for the hot and purple blood. In this way do all the animal parts obtain nourishment suitable and convenient for them.” Now we by no means admit that the two fluids or matters of the egg are there as appropriate means of nourishment for different orders of parts. For we have already said that the heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen, muscles, bones, ligaments, &c., &c., were all alike and indiscriminately white and bloodless on their first formation.

Further, on the preceding view of Fabricius it would follow that the heart, lungs, liver, spleen, &c., were not spermatic parts, did not originate from the seed (which he, however, will by no means allow), inasmuch as they too are by and by nourished by the blood and grow out of it; for every part is both formed and nourished by the same means, and nutrition is nothing more than the substitution of a like matter in the room of that which is lost.

Nor would he find less difficulty in answering the question how it happens that when the albumen in the egg is all consumed, the cold and white parts, such as the bones, ligaments, brain, spinal marrow, &c., continue to be nourished and to grow by means of the vitellus? which to these must be nourishment as inappropriate as albumen to the hot, red, and sanguine parts.

Adopting the views commented on, indeed, we should be compelled to admit that the hot and sanguineous parts were the last to be produced: the flesh after the bones; the liver, spleen, and lungs after the ligaments and intestinal canal; and further, that the cold parts of the chick must come together and attain maturity, the white being all the while consumed, and the hot parts be engendered subsequently, when the vitellus fails and ceases from nourishing them; and then it would be certain that all the parts could not take their rise in and be constituted out of the same clear liquid. All such conclusions, however, are refuted by simple ocular inspection.

I add another argument to those already supplied: the eggs of cartilaginous fishes--skates, the dog-fish, &c.,--are of two colours--their yelks are of a good deep colour; nevertheless all the parts of these fishes are white, bloodless, and cold, not even excepting the substance of their liver. On the contrary, I have seen a certain breed of fowls of large size, their feathers black, their flesh well supplied with blood, their liver red; yet were the yelks of the eggs of these fowls--fruitful eggs--of the palest shade of yellow, not deeper than the tint of ripe barley straw.

Fabricius, however, seems in these words[320] to retract all he has but just said: “There is one thing to be particularly wondered at both in the yelk and the white, viz. that neither of them being blood, they are still so near to the nature of blood that they in fact differ but very slightly from it--there is but little wanting to constitute either of them blood; so that little labour and a very slight concoction suffice to effect the change. The veins and arteries distributed to the membranes of both the white and yelk are consequently seen replete with blood at all times; the white and yelk nevertheless continuing possessed of their own proper nature, though either, so soon as it is imbibed by the vessels, is changed into blood, so closely do they approach in constitution to this fluid.”

But if it be matter of certainty that blood exists no less in the vessels distributed to the albumen than in those sent to the vitellus, and that both of these fluids are so closely allied to blood in their nature, and turn into blood so readily; who, I beseech you, will doubt that the blood, and all the parts which are styled sanguineous, are nourished and increased through the albumen as well as the vitellus?

Our author, however, soon contrives a subterfuge from this conclusion: “Although all this be true,” he says,[321] “still must we conceive that the matter which is imbibed by the veins from the yelk and white is only blood in the same sense as the chyle in the mesenteric veins, in which nothing but blood is ever seen; now chyle is but the shadow of blood, and is first perfected in the liver; and in like manner the matter taken up by the veins from the white and yellow is only the shadow of blood,” &c. Be it so; but hiding under this shadow, he does not answer the question, wherefore the blood and blood-like parts should not, for the reasons cited, be equally well nourished by the albumen as by the vitellus?

Had our author, in like manner, asserted that the hotter parts are rather nourished by that blood which is derived from the vitellus than by that attracted from the albumen, and the colder parts, on the other hand, by that which is derived from the albumen, I should not myself have been much disposed to gainsay him.

There is one consideration in the whole question, however, which is sorely against him; it is this--how is the blood formed in the egg? by what agent is either white or yelk turned into blood whilst the liver is not yet in existence? For in the egg, at all events, he could not say that the blood was transfused from the mother. He says, indeed, “This blood is produced and concocted in the veins rather than in the liver; but it becomes bone, cartilage, flesh, &c. in the parts themselves, where it undergoes exact concoction and assimilation.” In this he adds nothing; he neither tells us how or by what means perfect blood is concocted and elaborated in the minute veins both of the albumen and vitellus, the liver, as I have said, not having yet come into existence,--not a particle of any part of the body, in fact, having yet been produced by which either concoction or elaboration might be effected. And then, forgetful of what he has previously said, viz. that the hot and hæmatous parts are nourished by the vitellus and the cold and anæmic parts by the albumen, he is plainly in contradiction with himself when he admits that the same blood is turned into bone, cartilage, flesh, and all other parts.

More than this, Fabricius has slipped the greatest difficulty of all, the source of not a little doubt and debate to the medical mind, viz. how the liver should be the source and artificer of the blood, seeing that this fluid not only exists in the egg before any viscus is formed, but that all medical writers teach that the parenchymata of the viscera are but effusions of blood? Is the work the author of its workman? If the parenchyma of the liver come from the blood, how can it be the cause of the blood?

What follows is of the same likelihood: “There is another reason wherefore the albumen should be separated from the yelk, namely, that the fœtus may swim in it, and be thus supported, lest tending downwards by its own weight, it should incline to one particular part, and dragging, should break the vessels, in preventing which the viscidity and purity of the albumen contribute effectually. For did the fœtus grow amid the yelk, it might readily sink to the bottom, and so cause laceration of that body.” Sufficiently jejune! For what, I entreat, can the purity of the albumen contribute to the support of the embryo? Or how should the thinner albumen sustain it better than the thicker and more earthy yelk? Or where the danger, I ask, of its sinking down, when we see that the egg in incubation is always laid on its side, and there is nothing to fear either for the ascent or the descent of the embryo? It is indubitable, indeed, that not only does the embryo of the chick float in the egg, but that the embryo of every animal during its formation floats in the uterus; this however takes place amidst the fluid which we have called colliquament, and neither in the albumen nor vitellus, and we have elsewhere given the reason wherefore this is so.

“Aristotle informs us,” says Fabricius, “that the vitellus rises to the blunt end of the egg when the chick is conceived; and this because the animal is incorporated from the chalaza, which adheres to the vitellus; whence the vitellus which was in the middle is drawn towards the upper wider part of the egg, that the chick may be produced where the natural cavity exists, which is so indispensable to its well-being.” The chalaza, however, is certainly connected still more intimately with the albumen than with the yelk.

My mode of interpreting the ascent in question is this: the spot or cicatricula conspicuous on the membrana vitelli, expands under the influence of the spirituous colliquament engendered within it, and requiring a larger space, it tends towards the blunt end of the egg. The liquefied portion of the vitellus and albumen, diluted in like manner, and concocted and made more spirituous, swims above the remaining crude parts, just as the inferior particles of water in a vessel, when heated, rise from the bottom to the top, a fact which every medical man must have observed when he had chanced to put a measure of thick and turbid urine into a bath of boiling water, in which case the upper part first becomes clear and transparent. Another example will make this matter still more plain. There is an instrument familiar to almost everybody, made rather for amusement than any useful purpose, nearly full of water, on the surface of which float a number of hollow glass beads which by their lightness and swimming together support a variety of figures, Cupids with bows and quivers, chariots of the sun, centaurs armed, and the like, which would else all sink to the bottom. So also does the eye of the egg, as I have called it, or first colliquament, dilated by the heat of the incubating fowl and genital virtue inherent in the egg, expand, and thereby rendered lighter, rise to the top, when the vitellus, with which it is connected follows. It is because the cicatricula, formerly situated on the side of the vitellus, now tends to rise directly upwards that the thicker albumen is made to give place, and the chalazæ are carried to the sides of the egg.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-FIRST.

Of the uses of the other parts of the egg.

The shell is hard and thick that it may serve as a defence against external injury to the fluids and the chick it includes. It is brittle, nevertheless, particularly towards the blunt end, and as the time of the chick’s exclusion draws near, doubtless that the birth may suffer no delay. The shell is porous also; for when an egg, particularly a very recent one, is dressed before the fire, it sweats through its pores. Now these pores are useful for ventilation; they permit the heat of the incubating hen to penetrate more readily, and the chick to have supplies of fresh air; for that it both breathes and chirps in the egg before its exclusion is most certain.

The membranes serve to include the fluids, and therefore are they present in the same number as these, and therefore is the colliquament also invested, as soon as it is produced, with a tunica propria, which Aristotle[322] refers to in these words: “A membrane covered with ramifications of blood-vessels already surrounds the clear liquid,” &c. But the exit of the chick being at hand, and the albumen and colliquament being entirely consumed, all the membranes, except that which surrounds the vitellus, are dried up and disappear; the membrana vitelli, on the contrary, along with the yelk, is retracted into the peritoneum of the chick and included in the abdomen. Of the membranes two are common to the whole egg, which they surround immediately under the shell; the rest belong, one to the albumen, one to the yelk, one to the colliquament; but all still conduce to the preservation and separation of the parts they surround. The outer of the two common membranes which adheres to the shell is the firmer, that it may take no injury from the shell; the inner one again is smooth and soft, that it may not hurt the fluids; in the same way, therefore, as the meninges of the brain protect it from the roughness of the superincumbent skull. The internal membranes, as I have said, include and keep separate their peculiar fluids, whence they are extremely thin, pellucid, and easily torn.

Fabricius ascribes great eminence and dignity to the chalazæ, regarding them as the parts whence the chick is formed; he, however, leaves the spot or cicatricula connected with the membrana vitelli without any office whatsoever, looking on it merely as the remains of the peduncle whence the vitellus was detached from the vitellarium in the superior uterus of the hen. In his view the vitellus formerly obtained its nourishment either by this peduncle or the vessels passing through it; but when detached, and no longer nourished by the hen, a simple trace of the former connexion and important function alone remains.

I however am of opinion that the uses of the chalazæ are no other than those I have assigned them, namely, that they serve as poles to the microcosm of the egg, and are the association of all the membranes convoluted and twisted together, by which not only are the several fluids kept in their places, but also in their distinct relative positions. But I have absolute assurance that the spot or cicatricula in question is of the very highest importance; it is the part in which the calor insitus nestles; where the first spark of the vital principle is kindled; for the sake of which, in a word, the whole of the rest of the fluids and all the membranes of the egg are contrived. But this has been already insisted on above.

Formerly, indeed, I did think with Fabricius that this cicatricula was the remains or trace of the detached peduncle; but I afterwards learned by more accurate observation that this was not the case; that the peduncle, by which the vitellus hangs, was infixed in no such limited space as we find it in apples and plums, and in such a way as would have given rise to a scar on its separation. This peduncle, in short, expands like a tube from the ovary on towards the vitellus, the horizon of which it embraces in a bipartite semicircle, not otherwise than the tunica conjunctiva embraces the eye; and this in suchwise that the superior part of the vitellus, or the hemisphere which regards the ovary, is almost free from any contact or cohesion with the peduncle, in the superior part of the cup or hollow of which nevertheless, but somewhat to the side, the spot or cicatricula in question is placed. The peduncles becoming detached from the vitelli can therefore in no way be said to leave any trace of their attachments behind them. Of the great importance of this spot in generation I have already spoken in the historical portion of my work.

But I have still, always following my old teacher Fabricius as my guide on the way, to treat of the uses of the cavity in the blunt end of the egg.

Fabricius enumerates various conveniences arising from this cavity, according to its dimensions. I shall be brief on the subject: it contains air, and is therefore useful in the ventilation of the egg, assisting the perspiration, refrigeration, and respiration, and finally the chirping of the chick. Whence this cavity, small at first, is larger by and by, and at last becomes of great size, as the several offices mentioned come into play.

Thus far have we spoken of the generation of the egg and chick, and of the uses of the several parts of the egg; and to the type exhibited we have referred the mode of generation of oviparous animals in general. We have still to speak of the generation of viviparous animals, in doing which we shall as before refer all to a single familiarly known species.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-SECOND.

An egg is the common origin of all animals.

“Animals,” says Aristotle,[323] “have this in common with vegetables, that some of them arise from seed, others arise spontaneously; for as plants either proceed from the seed of other plants, or spring up spontaneously, having met with some primary condition fit for their evolution, some of them deriving their nourishment from the ground, others arising from and living on other plants; so are some animals engendered from cognate forms, and others arise spontaneously, no kind of cognate seed having preceded their birth; and whilst some of them are generated from the earth, or putrefying vegetable matter, like so many insects, others are produced in animals themselves and from the excrementitious matters of their parts.” Now the whole of these, whether they arise spontaneously, or from others, or in others, or from the parts or excrements of these, have this in common, that they are engendered from some principle adequate to this effect, and from an efficient cause inherent in the same principle. In this way, therefore, the primordium from which and by which they arise is inherent in every animal. Let us entitle this the primordium vegetale or vegetative incipience, understanding by this a certain corporeal something having life in potentia; or a certain something existing per se, which is capable of changing into a vegetative form under the agency of an internal principle. Such primordia are the eggs of animals and the seeds of plants; such also are the conceptions of viviparous animals, and the worm, as Aristotle calls it, whence insects proceed: the primordia of different living things consequently differ from one another; and according to their diversities are the modes of generation of animals, which nevertheless all agree in this one respect, that they proceed from the vegetal primordium as from matter endowed with the virtue of an efficient cause, though they differ in respect of the primordium which either bursts forth, as it were, spontaneously and by chance, or shows itself as fruit or seed from something else preceding it. Whence some animals are spoken of as spontaneously produced, others as engendered by parents. And these last are again distinguished by their mode of birth, for some are oviparous, others viviparous, to which Aristotle[324] adds a vermiparous class. But if we take the thing as simple sense proclaims it, there are only two kinds of birth, inasmuch as all animals engender others either in actu--virtually, or in potentia--potentially. Animals which bring forth in fact and virtually are called viviparous, those that bring forth potentially are oviparous. For every primordium that lives potentially, we, with Fabricius, think ought to be called an egg, and we make no distinction between the worm of Aristotle and an egg, both because to the eye there is no difference, and because the identity is in conformity with reason. For the vegetal primordium which lives potentially is also an animal potentially. Nor can the distinction which Aristotle[325] made between the egg and the worm be admitted: for he defines an egg to be that “from part of which an animal is produced; whilst that,” he says elsewhere,[326] “which is totally changed, and which does not produce an animal from a part only, is a worm.” These bodies, however, agree in this, that they are both inanimate births, and only animals potentially; both consequently are eggs.

And then Aristotle himself, whilst he speaks of worms in one place, designates them by the name of eggs in another.[327] Treating of the locust, he says,[328] “its eggs become spoiled in autumn when the season is wet;” and again, speaking of the grasshopper, he has these words, “when the little worm has grown in the earth it becomes a matrix of grasshoppers (tettigometra);” and immediately afterwards, “the females are sweeter after coitus, for then they are full of white eggs.”

In this very place, indeed, where he distinguishes between an egg and a worm, he adds:[329] “but the whole of this tribe of worms, when they have come to their full size, are changed in some sort into eggs; for their shell or covering hardens, and they become motionless for a season, a circumstance that is plainly to be seen in the vermiculi of bees and wasps, and also in caterpillars.” Every one indeed may observe that the primordia of spiders, silkworms, and the like, are not less to be accounted eggs than those of the crustacea and mollusca, and almost all fishes, which are not actually animals, but are potentially possessed of the faculty of producing them. Since, then, those creatures that produce actually are called viviparous, and those that produce potentially either pass without any general distinguishing title or are called oviparous and particularly as such productions are vegetal primordia, analogous to the seeds of plants, which true eggs must needs be held to be, the conclusion is, that all animals are either viviparous or oviparous.

But as there are many species of oviparous animals, so must there also be several species of eggs; for every primordium is not alike fit to receive or assume every variety of animal form indifferently. Though we admit, therefore, that eggs in a general sense do not differ, yet when we find that one is perfect, another imperfect, it is obvious that they differ essentially from one another. Perfect eggs are such as are completed in the uterus, where they obtain their due dimensions before being extruded; of this kind are the eggs of birds. Imperfect eggs, again, are such as are prematurely excluded before they are of the full size, but increase after they are laid; of this description are the eggs of fishes, crustacea and mollusca; the primordia of insects, which Aristotle entitles worms, are farther to be referred to this class, as well as the primordia of those animals that arise spontaneously.

Moreover, although perfect eggs are of two colours, in other words, are composed of albumen and vitellus, some are still only of one hue, and consist of albumen alone. In like manner, of imperfect eggs, some from which a perfect animal proceeds are properly so called; such are the eggs of fishes; others are improperly so styled, they engendering an imperfect animal, namely, a worm, grub, or caterpillar, a kind of mean between a perfect and an imperfect egg, which, in respect of the egg or the primordium itself, is an animal endowed with sense and motion, and nourishing itself; but in respect of a fly, moth or butterfly, whose primordium it is potentially, it is as a creeping egg, and to be reputed as adequate to its own growth; of this description is the caterpillar, which having at length completed its growth is changed into a chrysalis or perfect egg, and ceasing from motion, it is like an egg, an animal potentially.

In the same way, although there are some eggs from the whole of which a perfect animal is produced by metamorphosis, without being nourished by any remains of the substance of the egg, but forthwith finds food for itself abroad, there are others from one part of which the embryo is produced, and from the remainder of which it is nourished:--although, I repeat, there are such differences among eggs, still, if we be permitted to conclude on the grounds of sense and analogy, there is no good reason wherefore those that Aristotle calls worms should not be spoken of as eggs; inasmuch as all vegetal principles are not indeed animals actually, but are so potentially, are true animal seeds, analogous to the seeds of vegetables, as we have already demonstrated in the particular instance of the hen’s egg. All animals are, therefore, either viviparous or oviparous, inasmuch as they all either produce a living animal in fact, or an egg, rudiment, or primordium, which is an animal potentially.

The generation of all oviparous animals may therefore be referred to that of the hen’s egg as a type, or at all events deduced from thence without difficulty, the same things and incidents that have been enumerated in connexion with the common fowl being also encountered in all other oviparous animals whatsoever. The various particulars in which they differ one from another, or in which they agree, either generally, or specifically, or analogically, will be subsequently treated of when we come to speak of the generation of insects and the animals that arise equivocally. For as every generation is a kind of way leading to the attainment of an animal form, as one race of animal is more or less like or unlike another, their constituent parts either agreeing or disagreeing, so does it happen in respect of their mode of generation. For perfect nature, always harmonious with herself in her works, has instituted similar parts for similar ends and actions: to arrive at the same results, to attain the same forms, she has followed the same path, and has established one and the same method in the business of generation universally.

Wherefore as we still find the same parts in the perfect or two-coloured egg of every bird, so do we also observe the same order and method pursued in the generation and development of their embryos as we have seen in the egg of the common fowl. And so also are the same things to be noted in the eggs of serpents and of reptiles, or oviparous quadrupeds, such as tortoises, frogs, and lizards, from all the perfect two-coloured eggs of which embryos are produced and perfected in the same manner. Nor is the case very different in regard to fishes. But of the manner in which spiders and the crustacea, such as shrimps and crabs, and the mollusca, such as the cuttlefish and calamary, arise from their eggs; of the conditions also upon which worms and grubs first proceed from the eggs of insects, which afterwards change into chrysalides or aurelias, as if they reverted anew to the state of eggs, from which at length emerge flies or butterflies--of the several respects in which these differ in their mode of generation from an egg, from what we have found in the hen’s egg, will be matter for remark in the proper place.

Although all eggs consisting of yelk and white are not produced and fecundated in the same manner, but some are made prolific through the intercourse of male and female, and others in some other way (as of fishes); and although there is some difference even in the mode in which eggs grow, some attaining maturity within the body of the parent, others continuing to be nourished and to grow when extruded, there is still no reason why an embryo should not be developed in the same precise manner in every egg--always understood as perfect--as it is in the egg of the hen. Wherefore the history which has been given of the evolution of the chick from the hen’s egg may be regarded as applicable to the generation of all other oviparous animals whatsoever, as well as to the inferences or conclusions which may be deduced from thence.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-THIRD.

Of the generation of viviparous animals.

Thus far have we treated mainly of the generation of oviparous animals; we have still to speak particularly of the other species of generation, the viviparous, to wit, in which many things identical with those we have noticed in oviparous generation will come to be observed. These we have reduced into order, and here at length present for consideration. Even the parts that appear paradoxical and in contradiction with the current views of generation will, I believe, be found entirely in conformity with truth.

Among viviparous animals, man, the most perfect of all creatures, occupies the foremost place; after him come our ordinary domestic animals, of which some are soliped, such as the horse and ass; others bisulcate, as the ox, goat, sheep, deer, and hog; others digitate, such as the dog, cat, rabbit, mouse, and others of the same description; from the modes of whose generation a judgment may be formed of that of all other viviparous animals. Wherefore I shall propose a single genus, by way of general example or type, as we did in the case of the oviparous class; this made familiar to us, will serve as a light or standard, by means of which all the others may be judged of by analogy.

The reasons that led me to select the hen’s egg as the measure of eggs in general have been already given: eggs are of little price, and are everywhere to be obtained, conditions that permit repeated study, and enable us cheaply and readily to test the truth of statements made by others.

We have not the same facilities in studying the generation of viviparous animals: we have rarely, if ever, an opportunity of dissecting the human uterus; and then to enter on the subject experimentally in the horse, ox, sheep, goat, and other cattle, would be attended with immense labour and no small expense; dogs, cats, rabbits, and the like, however, will supply those with subjects who are desirous of putting to the test of experiment the matters that are to be delivered by us in this place.

Fabricius of Aquapendente, as if every conception of a viviparous animal were in a certain sense an egg, begins his treatise with the egg as the universal example of generation; and among other reasons for his conclusions assigns this in particular:[330] “Because the study of the egg has the most extensive application, the greater number of animals being engendered from eggs.” Now we, at the very outset of our observations, asserted that ALL animals were in some sort produced from eggs. For even on the same grounds, and in the same manner and order in which a chick is engendered and developed from an egg, is the embryo of viviparous animals engendered from a pre-existing conception. Generation in both is one and identical in kind: the origin of either is from an egg, or at least from something that by analogy is held to be so. An egg is, as already said, a conception exposed beyond the body of the parent, whence the embryo is produced; a conception is an egg remaining within the body of the parent until the fœtus has acquired the requisite perfection; in everything else they agree; they are both alike primordially vegetables, potentially they are animals. Wherefore, the same theorems and conclusions, though they may appear paradoxical, which we drew from the history of the egg, turn out to be equally true with regard to the generation of animals generally. For it is an admitted fact that all embryos, even those of man, are procreated from some conception or primordium. Let us, therefore, say that that which is called primordium among things arising spontaneously, and seed among plants, is an egg among oviparous animals, i. e. a certain corporeal substance, from which, through the motions and efficacy of an internal principle, a plant or an animal of one description or another is produced; but the prime conception in viviparous animals is of the same precise nature, a fact which we have found approved both by sense and reason.

What we have already affirmed of the egg, viz. that it was the sperma or seed of animals and analogous to the seeds of plants, we now affirm of the conception, which is indeed the seed of an animal, and therefore also properly called ovum or egg. Because “a true seed,” according to Aristotle,[331] “is that which derives its origin from the intercourse of male and female, and possesses the virtues of both; such as is the seed of all vegetables, and of some animals, in which the sexes are not distinct, and is, as that which is first mingled from male and female, a kind of promiscuous conception or animal; for it has those things already that are recognised of both;” i. e. matter adapted to nourish the fœtus, and a plastic or formative and effective virtue. And so in like manner is a conception the fruit of the intercourse of male and female, and the seed of the future embryo; it therefore does not differ from an egg.

“But that which proceeds from the generant is the cause which first obtains the principle of generation, (i. e. it is the efficient cause,) and ought to be called the geniture,”[332] not the seed, as is commonly done both by the vulgar and philosophers at the present time; because it has not that which is required of both the concurring agents, neither is it analogous to the seeds of plants. But whatever possesses this, and corresponds to the seeds of vegetables, that too is rightly entitled egg and conception.

Further, the definition of an egg, as given by Aristotle,[333] is perfectly applicable to a conception:--“An egg,” he says, “is that the principal part of which goes to constitute an animal, the remainder to nourish the animal so constituted.” Now the same thing is common to a conception, as shall be made to appear visibly from the dissection of viviparous animals.

Moreover, as the chick is excluded from the egg under the influence of warmth derived from the incubating hen or obtained in any other way, even so is the fœtus produced from the conception in the uterus under the genial warmth of the mother’s body. In few words, I say, that what oviparous animals supply by their breast and incubation, viviparous animals afford by their uterus and internal embrace. For the rest, in all that respects the development, the embryo is produced from the conception in the same manner and order as the chick from the egg, with this single difference, that whatever is required for the formation and growth of the chick is present in the egg, whilst the conception, after the formation of the embryo, derives from the uterus of the mother whatever more is requisite to its increase, by which it continues to grow in common with the fœtus. The egg, on the contrary, becomes more and more empty as the chick increases; the nutriment that was laid up in it is diminished; nor does the chick receive aught in the shape of new aliment from the mother; whilst the fœtus of viviparous animals has a continued supply, and when born, moreover, continues to live upon its mother’s milk. The eggs of fishes, however, increase through nourishment obtained from without; and insects and crustaceous and molluscous animals have eggs that enlarge after their extrusion. Yet are not these called eggs the less on this account, nor, indeed, are they therefore any the less eggs. In like manner the conception is appropriately designated by the name of ovum or egg, although it requires and procures from without the variety of aliment that is needful to its growth.

Fabricius gives this reason for some animals being oviparous, for all not producing living offspring: “It is,” he says, “that eggs detained in the uterus till they had produced their chicks would interfere with the flight of birds, and weigh them down by their weight. Serpents would also be hindered in their alternate zig-zag movements by a multitude of eggs in the abdomen. In the body of tortoises, with their hard and girding shell, there is no room for any store or increase of eggs; nor would the abdomen of fishes suffice for the multitude of eggs they must spawn were these to grow to any size. It was, therefore, matter of necessity that those creatures should lay their eggs imperfect. It seems most natural that an animal should retain and cherish its conception in its interior until the fœtus it produces has come to maturity; but nature sees herself compelled, as it were, occasionally to permit the premature birth of various eggs, and to provide them, without the body of the parent, with the nourishment they require for their complete development. As to everything that refers to the evolution of the fœtus, all animals are engendered from an oviform primordium; I say oviform, not as meaning that it has the precise configuration of an egg, but the nature and constitution of one; this being common in generation, that the vegetal primordium whence the fœtus is produced, including the nature of an egg, corresponding in its proportions to the seed of a plant, pre-exists. In all vegetal primordia, consequently, whether eggs, or having the form of eggs, there are inherent the nature and conditions of an egg, properties which the seeds of plants have in common with the eggs of animals. The primordium of any animal, whatsoever, is therefore called seed and fruit; and in like manner the seed of every plant is spoken of as a kind of conception or egg.”

And this is the reason why Aristotle says:[334] “Animals that engender internally have something formed in the fashion of an egg after their first conception: there is a fluid contained within a delicate membrane, like an egg without the shell. And this is the cause why the disorders of the conception, which are apt to occur in the early period, are called discharges.” Such a discharge is particularly observed among women when they miscarry in the course of the first or second month. I have repeatedly seen such ova aborted at this time; and such was the one which Hippocrates has described as having been thrown off by the female pipe-player in consequence of a fall.

In the uterus of all animals there is consequently present a prime conception or primordium, which, on Aristotle’s testimony,[335] “is like an egg surrounded with a membrane from which the shell had been removed.” This fact will appear still more plainly from what is about to be said. Meantime let us conclude with the philosopher, “that all living creatures, whether they swim, or walk, or fly, and whether they come into the world with the form of an animal or of an egg, are engendered in the same manner.”

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-FOURTH.

The generation of viviparous animals in general is illustrated from the history of that of the hind and doe, and the reason of this selection.

It was customary with his Serene Majesty, King Charles, after he had come to man’s estate, to take the diversion of hunting almost every week, both for the sake of finding relaxation from graver cares, and for his health; the chase was principally the buck and doe, and no prince in the world had greater herds of deer, either wandering in freedom through the wilds and forests, or kept in parks and chases for this purpose. The game during the three summer months was the buck, then fat and in season; and in the autumn and winter, for the same length of time, the doe. This gave me an opportunity of dissecting numbers of these animals almost every day during the whole of the season when they were rutting, taking the male, and falling with young; I had occasion, so often as I desired it, to examine and study all the parts, particularly those dedicated to the offices of generation.

I shall therefore consider the generation of viviparous animals in general, from the particular history of the hind and doe, as the instance most convenient to me; and as I have done above, in speaking of oviparous generation, where I have referred everything to the common fowl, so shall I here, in discussing viviparous generation, refer all to the fallow deer and roe. In taking this course, I am not moved by the same reasons as I was in reference to the hen’s egg; but because the great prince, whose physician I was, besides taking much pleasure in such inquiries, and not disdaining to bear witness to my discoveries, was pleased in his kindness and munificence to order me an abundant supply of these animals and repeated opportunities of examining their bodies.

I therefore propose to give the history of generation in the hind and doe as I have observed it during a long series of years, and as most familiar to me, believing that from thence something certain in reference to the generation of other viviparous animals may be concluded. In giving a faithful narrative of this history, I shall not abstain in its course from introducing particulars worthy of note that have either been observed accidentally and by the way, or that are the result of particular dissections instituted for the purpose of arriving at conclusions, the subjects of these having been other bisulcated, hoofed, or multungulated animals, or, finally, man himself. We shall give a simple narrative of the series of formations of the fœtus, following the footsteps of nature in the process.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-FIFTH.

Of the uterus of the hind and doe.

About to treat of the generation of the hind and doe, our first business will be to speak of the place where it proceeds, or of the uterus, as we have done above, in giving the history of the common fowl, by which all that follows will be more easily and readily understood. And history has this great pre-eminence over fable, that it narrates the events which transpired in certain places at certain times, and therefore leads us to knowledge by a safe and assured way.

Now that we may have a clearer idea of the uterus of the hind, I shall describe both its external and internal structure, following the uterus of the human female as my guide. For man is the most consummate of creatures, and has therefore the genital as well as all other parts in higher perfection than any other animal. The parts of the female uterus consequently present themselves with great distinctness, and by reason of the industry of anatomists in this direction are believed to be particularly well known to us.

We meet with many things in the uterus of deer which we encounter in the uterus of the human female; and we also observe several that differ. In the vulva or os externum we find neither labia, nor clitoris, nor nymphæ, but only two openings, one for the urine, adjacent to the pecten, or os pubis, the other the vagina, lying between the meatus urinarius and the anus. A cuticular or membranous fold, such as we have noted in the hen, stretching downwards from the anus, acts as a velabrum, supplies the place of nymphæ and labia pudendi, and guards against injury from without. This velabrum must be somewhat retracted by the female when she copulates, or at all events must be raised by the penis of the male as it enters the vulva.

The symphysis pubis being divided in deer, and the legs widely separated, the urinary bladder, the vagina which is entered by the penis of the buck, and the cervix uteri, are all seen in their relative situations, not otherwise than they are in women; the ligamenta suspensoria, with the veins, arteries, and testicles, as they are called, also come into sight; the cornua of the uterus in these creatures are also more remarkable than any other part of this organ.

As for the vessels called vasa præparantia and vasa deferentia seu ejaculantia, you will discover nothing of the kind here, nor indeed in any other female animal that I am aware of. The anatomists who believe that women emit a seminal fluid sub coitu have been too eager in their search after such vessels; for in some they are not met with at all, and where they do occur they never present themselves with anything of uniformity of character. Wherefore it seems most likely that women do not emit any semen sub coitu, which is in conformity as I have said with what the greater number of women state. And although some of warmer temperament shed a fluid in the sexual embrace, still that this is fruitful semen, or is a necessary requisite to conception, I do not believe; for many women conceive without having any emission of the kind, and some even without any kind of pleasurable sensation whatsoever. But of these things more in another place.

The vulva, or vagina uteri, which extends from the os externum to the inner orifice of the uterus, is situated in the hind, as well as in the human female, between the urinary bladder and the intestinum rectum, and corresponds in length, width, and general dimensions, with the penis of the male. When this part is laid open it is found occupied lengthwise by rugæ and furrows, admitting of ready distension, and lubricated with a sluggish fluid. At its bottom we observe a very narrow and small orifice, the commencement of the cervix uteri, by which whatever is propelled outwards from the cavity of the uterus must pass. This is the corresponding orifice to that which medical men assert is so firmly closed and sealed up in the pregnant woman and virgin, that it will not even admit the point of a probe or fine needle.

The os uteri is followed by the cervix or process, which is much longer and rounder than in woman, and also more fibrous, thicker, and nervous; it extends from the bottom of the vagina to the body of the uterus. If this cervix uteri be divided longitudinally, you perceive not only its external orifice at the bottom of the vagina, its surface in close contact, and so firmly agglutinated that not even air blown into the vagina will penetrate the cavity of the uterus, but five other similar constrictions placed in regular order, firmly contracted against the entrance of any foreign body and sealed with gelatinous mucus; just as we find the narrow orifice of the woman’s uterus plugged with a yellowish glutinous mass. A like constriction of parts, all firmly closed, and precluding all possibility of entrance, Fabricius has found in the uterine neck of the sheep, sow, and goat. In the deer there are very distinctly five of these constrictions, or so many orifices of the uterus constricted and conglutinated, which may all justly be looked upon as so many barriers against the entrance of anything from without. Such particular care has nature taken, that if the first barrier were forced by any cause or violence, the second should still stand good, and so the third, and the fourth, and the fifth, determined apparently that nothing should enter. A probe pushed from within outwards, however, from the cavity of the uterus towards the vagina, passes through readily. A way had to be left open for the escape of flatus, menstrual blood, and other excreted fluids; but even the smallest and most subtile things, air, for instance, and the seminal fluid are precluded all access from without.

In all animals this uterine orifice is found obstructed or plugged up in the same way as it is wont to be in women, among whom we have sometimes known the outlet so much constricted that the menses, lochia, and other humours were retained in the womb, and became the exciting cause of most severe hysterical symptoms. In such cases it became necessary to contrive a suitable instrument with which the os uteri being opened, the matters that stagnated within were discharged, when all the accidents disappeared. By this contrivance injections could also be thrown into the cavity of the uterus, and by means of these I have cured internal ulcers of the womb, and have occasionally even found a remedy for barrenness.

The cavity of the uterus in the deer is extremely small, and the thickness of its walls not great; the body of the womb in these animals is, in fact, but a kind of vestibule, or ante-room, in the cavity of which a passage opens to the right and left into either cornu.

For the parts are different in almost all animals from what they are in woman, in whom the principal part of the uterus is its body, and the cervix and cornua are mere appendices, that scarcely attract attention. The neck is short; the cornua are slender round processes extending from the fundus uteri like a couple of tubes, which anatomists indeed commonly speak of as the vasa ejaculatoria. In the deer, however, as in all other quadrupeds, except the ape and the solipeds, the chief organ of generation is not the body but the horns of the uterus. In the human female and the solipedia, the uterus is the ‘place’ of conception, in all the rest the conception is perfected in the cornua; and this is the reason why writers so commonly speak of the cornua uteri in the lower animals under the simple name of the uterus, saying that the uterus in certain animals is bipartite, whilst in others it is not, understanding by the word uterus the place in which conception takes place, this in the majority of viviparous and especially of multiparous animals being the cornua, to which moreover all the arteries and veins distributed to the organs of generation are sent. We shall therefore, in treating of the history of generation in the deer employ the words uterus and horns of the uterus promiscuously.

In the human female, as I have said, the two tubes that arise near the cervix uteri and there perforate its cavity have no analogy to the parts generally called cornua, but, on the contrary, in the mind of some anatomists, to the vasa spermatica. By others again they are called the spiramenta uteri--the breathing tubes of the uterus; and by others still they are called the vasa deferentia seu reservantia, as if they were of the same nature as the canals so designated in the male; whilst they in fact correspond to the cornua of the uterus in other animals, as most clearly appears from their situation, connexion, length, perforation, general resemblance, and also office. For as many of the lower animals regularly conceive in the cornua uteri, so do women occasionally carry their conceptions in the cornu, or this tube, as the learned Riolanus[336] has shown from the observations of others, and as we ourselves have found it with our own eyes.

These cornua terminate in a common cavity which, as stated, forms a kind of porch or vestibule to the uterus, and corresponds in the deer to the neck of the womb in women; in the same way as the tubes in question in the human female correspond to the cornua uteri in the deer. Now this name of cornua has been derived from the resemblance of the parts to the horns of an animal; and in the same way as the horns of a goat or ram are ample at the base, arched and protuberant in front, and bent-in behind, so are these horns of the uterus in the hind and doe capacious inferiorly, and taper gradually off superiorly, as they are reflected towards the spine. Further, as the horns of the animal are unequally tuberculated and uneven in front, but smooth behind, so are the horns of the uterus tuberculated, as it were, and uneven, through the presence of cells, something like those of the colon, inferiorly and anteriorly; but superiorly, and on the aspect towards the spine, they are continuous and smooth, and present themselves secured and bound down by a ligamentous band; they at the same time gradually decrease in size like horns. Did one take a piece of empty intestine, such as is used for making sausages, and drawing a tape through it, tied this on one side, he would have it puckered and constricted on that side, and thrown into cells similar to those of the colon on the opposite side. Such is the structure of the cornua of the uterus in the hind and doe. In other animals it is different; for there the cells are either much larger, or they are entirely wanting. The cells of the cornua uteri of the hind and doe, however, are not all of the same size; the first that is met with is much larger than any of the others; and here it is that the conception is generally lodged.

As the uterus, tubes, or cornua, and other parts appertaining in the human female are connected with the pubes, spine, and surrounding structures by the medium of broad and fleshy membranes, by suspensory bands, as it were, which anatomists have designated by the name of bats’ wings, because they have found that the uterus suspended in this way resembled a bat with its wings expanded, so also are the cornua uteri, together with the testes [ovaries], on either side, and all the uterine vessels, connected with the neighbouring parts, particularly with the spine, by means of a firm membrane, within the folds of which are suspended all the parts that have been mentioned, and which serves the same office with reference to these uterine structures as the mesentery does to the intestines, and the mesometrium to the uterus of the fowl. In the same way, too, as the mesenteric arteries and veins are distributed to the intestines through the mesentery, are the uterine vessels distributed to the uterus through the membrane in question; in which also certain vessels and glands are perceived on either side, which by anatomists are generally designated the testicles [the ovaries.]

The substance of the horns of the uterus in the hind and doe is skinny or fleshy, like the coats of the intestines, and has a few very minute veins ramified over it. This substance you may in anatomical fashion divide into several layers, and note different courses of its component fibres, fitting them to perform the several motions and actions required, retention, namely, and expulsion. I have myself frequently seen these cornua moving like earthworms, or in the manner in which the intestines may at any time be observed, twisting themselves with an undulatory motion, on laying open the abdomen of a recently slaughtered animal, by which they move on the chyle and excrements to inferior portions of the gut, as if they were surrounded and compressed with a ring forced over them, or were stripped between the fingers.

The uterine veins, as in woman, all arise from the vena cava, near the emulgents; the arteries (and this also is common to the deer and the human subject) arise from the crural branches of the descending aorta. And as in the pregnant woman the uterine vessels are relatively larger and more numerous than in any other part of the body, this is likewise the case in the pregnant hind and doe. The arteries, however, contrary to the arrangement in other parts of the body, are much more numerous than the veins; and air blown into them makes its way into the neighbouring veins, although the arteries cannot be inflated in their turn by blowing into the veins. This fact I also find mentioned by Master Riolanus; and it is a cogent argument for the circulation of the blood discovered by me; for he clearly proves that whilst there is a passage from the arteries into the veins, there is none backwards from the veins into the arteries. The arteries are more numerous than the veins, because a large supply of nourishment being required for the fœtus, it is only what is left unused that has to be returned by the latter channels.

In the deer as well as in the sheep, goat, and bisulcate animals generally, we find testicles; but these are mere little glands, which rather correspond in their proportions to the prostate or mesenteric glands, the use of which is to establish divarications for the veins, and to store up a fluid for lubricating the parts, than for secreting semen, concocting it into fecundity, and shedding it at the time of intercourse. I am myself especially moved to adopt this opinion, as well by numerous reasons which will be adduced elsewhere, as by the fact that in the rutting season, when the testes of the buck and hart enlarge and are replete with semen, and the cornua of the uterus of the hind and doe are greatly changed, the female testicles, as they are called, whether they be examined before or after intercourse, neither swell nor vary from their usual condition; they show no trace of being of the slightest use either in the business of intercourse or in that of generation.

It is surprising what a quantity of seminal fluid is found in the vesiculæ seminales and testicles of moles and the larger kinds of mice at the season of intercourse; this circumstance corresponds with what we have already noticed in the cock, and the great change perceptible in the organs of generation of both sexes; nevertheless, the glands, which are regarded as the female testes, continue all the while unchanged and without departure from their pristine appearance.

All that has now been said of the uterus and its horns in hinds and does applies in major part to viviparous animals in general, but not to the human female, inasmuch as she conceives in the body of the uterus, but all these, with the exception of the horse and ass, in the horns of the organ; and even the horse and ass, although they appear to carry their fruit in the uterus, still is the place of the conception in them rather of the nature of an uterine horn than the uterine body. For the place here is not bipartite indeed, but it is oblong, and different from the human uterus both in its situation, connexions, structure, and substance; it bears a greater affinity to the superior uterus or uterine process of the fowl, where the egg grows and becomes surrounded with the albumen, than to the uterus of the woman.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-SIXTH.

Of the intercourse of the hind and doe.

So much for the account of the uterus of the female deer, where we have spoken briefly upon all that seemed necessary to the history of generation, viz. the ‘place’ of conception, and the parts instituted for its sake. We have still to speak of the action and office of this ‘place,’ in other words, of intercourse and conception.

The hind and doe admit the male at one and only one particular season of the year, namely, in the middle of September, after the Feast of the Holy Cross; and they bring forth after the middle of June, about the Feast of St. John the Baptist (24th June). They, therefore, go with young about nine months, not eight, as Pliny says;[337] with us, at all events, they produce in the ninth month after they have taken the buck.

At the rutting season the bucks herd with the does; at other times they keep severally apart, the males, particularly the older ones, associating together, and the females and younger males trooping and feeding in company. The rutting season lasts for a whole month, and it begins later if the weather have been dry, earlier if it have been wet. In Spain, as I am informed, the deer are hardly in rut before the beginning of October, wet weather not usually setting in there until this time; but with us the rutting season rarely continues beyond the middle of October.

At this time deer are rendered savage by desire, so that they will attack both dogs and men, although at other seasons they are so timid and peaceable, and immediately betake themselves to flight on the barking of even the smallest dog.

Every male knows all his own females, nor will he suffer any one of them to wander from his herd: with a run he speedily drives back any straggler; he walks jealously from time to time among his wives; looks circumspectly about him, and the careful guardian of his own, he shows himself the watchful sentinel. If a strange doe commit any offence, he does not pursue her very eagerly, but rather suffers her to get away; but if another buck approach he instantly runs to meet him, and gives him battle with his antlers.

The hind and doe are held among the number of the chaster animals; they suffer the addresses of the male reluctantly, who, like the bull, mounts with violence, and unless forced or tired out, they resist him; which disinclination of the females appears also to be the reason of their herding together, and confining themselves to their own males, who are always the older and better armed; for when any strange male approaches them they immediately take to flight, and seek refuge in their own herd, and protection to their chastity, as it seems, from their proper husband.

If a younger male finds a female straying alone, he immediately pursues her, and when she is worn out and unable to fly farther he mounts and forces her to his pleasure.

The males all provide themselves what are called rutting places; that is to say, they dig a trench, or they take their stand upon an acclivity, whither they compel their females to come in turn. The female that is to be leapt stands with her hind feet in the trench prepared for the purpose, stooping or lowering her haunches somewhat, if need be; by which the male is enabled, pressing forward upon her in the same way as a bull, to strike her, in technical language, and finish the business of copulation at one assault.

Old and sturdy bucks have a considerable number of does in their herds, as many as ten, and even fifteen; younger and weaker males have fewer. Keepers say that the doe is sated with two, or at most with three leaps; once she has conceived she admits the male no more.

The lust of the male cools when he has served his females; he becomes shyer, and much leaner; he deserts his herd and roams alone, and feeds greedily to repair his wasted strength, nor does he afterwards approach a female for a whole year.

When the male is capable of intercourse the hair on his throat and neck grows black, and the extremity of the prepuce becomes of the same colour, and stinks abominably. The females take the male but rarely, and only in the night or in dusky places, which are, therefore, always chosen by the males for their connubial pleasures. When two stags engage in battle, as frequently happens, the vanquished yields possession of his females to the victor.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-SEVENTH.

Of the constitution or change that takes place in the uterus of the deer in the course of the month of September.

We now come to the changes that take place in the genital parts of the female after intercourse, and to the conception itself. In the month of September, then, when the female deer first comes in season, her cornua uteri, uterus, or place of conception, grows somewhat more fleshy and thick, softer also, and more tender. In the interior of either cornu, at that part, namely, which looks drawn together by a band, and is turned towards the spine, we observe, protruding in regular succession, five caruncles, soft warts, or papillæ. The first of these is larger than any of the others, and each in succession is smaller than the one before it, just as the cornua themselves become smaller and smaller towards their termination. Some of the caruncles grow to the thickness of the largest finger, and look like proud flesh; some are white, others of a deeper red.

From the 26th to the 28th of September, and also subsequently, in the month of October, the uterus becomes thicker, and the carunculæ mentioned come to resemble the nipples of the woman’s breast: you might fancy them ready to pour out milk. Having removed their apex that I might examine their internal structure, I found them made up of innumerable white points compacted together, like so many bristles erect, and connected by means of a certain mucous viscidity; compressed between the fore finger and thumb, from the base upwards, a minute drop of blood oozed out from each point, a fact which led me, after farther investigation, to conclude that they were entirely made up of the capillary branches of arteries.

During the season of intercourse, therefore, the uterine vessels, particularly the arteries, are observed to be more numerous and of larger size; although the parts called the female testes, as I have said above, are neither larger nor more highly gorged with blood than before, and do not appear to be altered in any way from their former state.

The inner aspect of the uterus or cornua uteri, where it is puckered into cells, is as smooth and soft as the ventricles of the brain, or the glans penis within the prepuce. Nothing, however, can be discovered there--neither the semen of the male, nor aught else having reference to the conception--during the whole of the months of September and October, although I have instituted repeated dissections with a view of examining the conception at this period. The males have been doing their duty all the while; nevertheless, reiterated dissection shows nothing. This is the conclusion to which I have come, after many years of observation. I have only occasionally found the five caruncles so close together that they formed a kind of continuous protuberance into the interior of the uterus. But when, after repeated inspections, I still found nothing more in the uterus, I began to doubt, and to ask myself whether the semen of the male could by any possibility make its way--by attraction or injection--to the seat of the conception? And repeated examination led me to the conclusion that none of the semen whatsoever reached this seat.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-EIGHTH.

Of what takes place in the month of October.

Repeated dissections performed in the course of the month of October, both before the rutting season was over and after it had passed, never enabled me to discover any blood or semen, or a trace of anything else, either in the body of the uterus or in its cornua. The uterus was only a little larger, and somewhat thicker; and the caruncles were more tumid and florid, and, when strongly pressed with the finger, discharged small drops of blood, much in the manner in which a little watery milk can be squeezed from the nipples of a woman in the fourth month of her pregnancy. In one or two does, indeed, I found a green and ichorous matter, like an abscess, filling the cavity of the uterus, which was preternaturally extenuated; in other respects these animals were healthy, and in as good condition as others which I examined at the same time.

Towards the end of October and beginning of November, the rutting season being now ended, and the females separating themselves from the males, the uterus begins (in some sooner, in others later) to shrink in size, and the walls of its internal cavity, inflated in appearance, to bulge out; for where the cells existed formerly there are now certain globular masses projecting internally, which nearly fill the whole cavity, by which the sides are brought into mutual contact, and almost agglutinated, as it seems, so that there is no interval between them. Even as we have seen the lips of boys who, in robbing a hive, had been stung in the mouth, swollen and enlarged, so that the oral aperture was much contracted, even so does the internal surface of the uterus in the doe enlarge, and become filled with a soft and pulpy substance, like the matter of the brain, that fills its cavity and involves the caruncles, which, though not larger than before, look whiter, and as if they had been steeped in hot water, much as the nurse’s nipple appears immediately after the infant has quitted it. And now I have not found it possible by any compression to force blood out of the caruncles as before.

Nothing can be softer, smoother, more delicate, than the inner aspect of the uterus thus raised into tubers. It rivals the ventricles of the brain in softness, so that without the information of the eye we should scarcely perceive by the finger that we were touching anything. When the abdomen is laid open immediately after the death of the animal, I have frequently seen the uterus affected with a wavy and creeping motion, such as is perceived in the lower part of a slug or snail whilst it is moving, as if the uterus were an animal within an animal, and possessed a proper and independent motion. I have frequently observed a movement of the same kind as that just described in the intestines, whilst engaged in vivisections; and indeed such a motion can both be seen and felt in the bodies of dogs and rabbits whilst they are alive and uninjured. I have also observed a corresponding motion in the testes and scrotum of men; and I have even known women upon whom, in their eagerness for offspring, such palpitations have imposed. But whether the uterus in hysterical females, by ascending, descending, and twisting, experiences any such motion or not, I cannot take upon me to declare; and whether the brain, in its actions and conceptions, moves in anything of a similar manner or not, though a point difficult of investigation, I am inclined to look upon as one by no means unworthy of being attempted.

Shortly afterwards, the tubercular elevations of the inner surface of the uterus that have been mentioned begin to shrink; it is as if, losing a quantity of moisture, they became less plump. In some instances; indeed, though rarely, I have observed something like purulent matter adhering to them, such as is usually seen on the surface of wounds and ulcers when they are digested, as it is said, they pour out smooth and homogeneous pus. When I first saw this matter, I doubted whether it was the semen of the male or not, or a substance concocted from its purer portion. But as it was only in exceedingly rare instances that I met with such matter, and as twenty days had then passed since the doe had had any intercourse with the buck, and farther, as the matter was not viscid and tenacious, or spumous, such as the seminal fluid presents itself to us, but rather friable, purulent looking, and inclining to yellow, I came to the conclusion that it was the effect of accident, a sweat or exudation in consequence of violent exercise previous to death; just as in a catarrh the thinner defluxion of the nose is by and by changed into a thicker mucus.

Having frequently shown this alteration in the uterus to his majesty the king as the first indication of pregnancy, and satisfied him at the same time that there was nothing in the shape of semen or conception to be found in the cavity of the organ, and he had spoken of this as an extraordinary fact to several about him, a discussion at length arose: the keepers and huntsmen asserted at first that it was but an argument of a tardy conception occasioned by the want of rain. But by and by, when they saw the rutting season pass away, I still continuing to maintain that things were in the same state, they began to say that I was both deceived myself and had misled the king, and that there must of necessity be something of the conception to be found in the uterus. These men, however, when I got them to bring their own eyes to the inquiry, soon gave up the point. The physicians, nevertheless, held it among their αδύνατα--their impossibilities--that any conception should ever be formed without the presence of the semen masculinum, or some trace remaining of a fertile intercourse within the cavity of the womb.

That this important question might be the more satisfactorily settled in all time to come, his highness the king ordered about a dozen does to be separated from the bucks towards the beginning of October, and secluded in the inclosure, which is called the course, at Hampton Court, because the animal placed there has no means of escape from the dogs let loose upon it. Now that no one might say the animals thus secluded retained any of the semen received from the last connexions with the male, I dissected several of them before the rutting season had passed, and ascertained that no seminal fluid remained in the uterus, although the others were found to be pregnant in consequence of the preceding intercourse--impregnated by a kind of contagion as it appears--and duly produced their fawns at the proper time.

In the dog, rabbit, and several other animals, I have found nothing in the uterus for several days after intercourse. I therefore regard it as demonstrated that after fertile intercourse among viviparous as well as oviparous animals, there are no remains in the uterus either of the semen of the male or female emitted in the act, nothing produced by any mixture of these two fluids, as medical writers maintain, nothing of the menstrual blood present as ‘matter’ in the way Aristotle will have it; in a word, that there is not necessarily even a trace of the conception to be seen immediately after a fruitful union of the sexes. It is not true, consequently, that in a prolific connexion there must be any prepared matter in the uterus which the semen masculinum, acting as a coagulating agent, should congeal, concoct, and fashion, or bring into a positive generative act, or, by drying its outer surface, include in membranes. Nothing certainly is to be seen within the uterus of the doe for a great number of days, namely, from the middle of September up to the 12th of November.

It appears moreover that all females do not shed seminal fluid into the uterus during intercourse; that there is no trace either of seminal fluid or menstrual blood in the uterus of the hind or doe, and many other viviparous animals. But as to what it is which is shed by women of warmer temperament no less than by men during intercourse, accompanied with failure of the powers and voluptuous sensations; whether it be necessary to fecundation, whether it come from the testes femininæ, and whether it be semen and prolific, is discussed by us elsewhere.

And whilst I speak of these matters, let gentle minds forgive me, if, recalling the irreparable injuries I have suffered, I here give vent to a sigh. This is the cause of my sorrow:--whilst in attendance on his majesty the king during our late troubles and more than civil wars, not only with the permission but by command of the Parliament, certain rapacious hands stripped not only my house of all its furniture, but what is subject of far greater regret with me, my enemies abstracted from my museum the fruits of many years of toil. Whence it has come to pass that many observations, particularly on the generation of insects, have perished, with detriment, I venture to say, to the republic of letters.

EXERCISE THE SIXTY-NINTH.

Of what takes place in the uterus of the doe during the month of November.

Taught by the experience of many years I can state truly that it is from the 12th to the 14th of November that I first discover anything which belongs to the future offspring in the uterus of the hind.

I remember, indeed, that in the year of grace 1633, the signs of conception, or the commencements of the embryos, made their appearance somewhat earlier; because the weather was then cloudy and wet. In does, too, which have rutted six or seven days sooner than hinds, I have always discovered something of the future fœtus about the 8th or 9th of November. What this is and how it is begun I shall proceed to state.

A little before anything is perceptible, the substance of the uterus or its horns appears less than it was before the animals began to rut, the white caruncles are more flaccid, as I have said, and the protuberances of the internal coat subside somewhat, and are corrugated and look moist. For about the date above mentioned certain mucous filaments like spiders’ webs are observed drawn from the extremities, or superior angles of the cornua through the middle of either, and also through the body of the uterus. These filaments becoming conjoined present themselves as a membranous and gelatinous tunic or empty sac. Even as the plexus choroides is extended through the ventricles of the brain, is this oblong sac produced through the whole of either horn and the intervening cavity of the uterus, insinuating itself between the wrinkles of the flabby internal tunic, and sending delicate fibres among the aforementioned rounded protuberances, being nearly in the same manner as the pin mater dips between the convolutions of the brain.

Within a day or two this sac becomes filled with a clear, watery, sluggish albuminous matter, and now presents itself as a long-shaped pudding full of fluid. It adheres by its external glutinous matter to the containing walls of the uterus, but so that it is still easily separated from these; for if it be taken hold of cautiously in the strait of the uterus, where it is constricted in its course, it can be drawn entire out of either horn.

The conception arrived at this stage removed entire, presents itself with the figure of a wallet or double pudding; externally, it is covered with a purulent-looking matter; internally, it is smooth, and contains in its cavity a viscid fluid not unlike the thinner white of egg.

This is the conception of the hind and doe in its first stage. And since it has now the nature and state of an egg, and the definition given by Aristotle[338] of an egg is applicable to it, namely: “A body from one part of which an animal is produced, the remainder serving as nourishment to that which is engendered;” and farther, as it is the primordium of the future fœtus, it is therefore called the ovum, or egg of the animal, in conformity with that passage of the philosopher where he says:[339] “Those animals which engender internally, have a certain oviform body produced after the first conception. For a humour is included within a delicate membrane, such as that which you find under the shell in the egg of the hen; wherefore the blightings of conceptions that are apt to take place about this period are called fluxes.” This conception, therefore, as we have already said of the egg, is the true sperma or seed, comprising the virtue of both sexes in itself, and is analogous to the seed of the vegetable. So that Aristotle, describing the first conception of women, says,[340] that it is “covered with a membrane like an egg from which the shell has been removed;” such as Hippocrates describes as having been passed by the female pipe-player. And I have myself frequently seen such ova, of the size of pigeons’ eggs, and containing no fœtus, discharged by women about the second month after conception; when the ovum was of the size of a pheasant’s or hen’s egg, the embryo could be made out, the size of the little finger nail, floating within it. But the membrane surrounding the conception has not yet acquired any annexed placenta; neither is it connected with the uterus; there is only at its upper and blunter part a kind of delicate mossy or woolly covering which stands for the rudiments of the future placenta. The inner aspect is smooth and polished, and covered with numerous ramifications of the umbilical vessels. In the third month this ovum exceeds a goose’s egg in size, and includes a perfect embryo of the length of two fingers’ breadths. In the fourth month it is larger than an ostrich’s egg. All these things I have noted in the numerous careful dissections of aborted ova which I have made.

In the way above indicated do the hind and doe, affected by a kind of contagion, finally conceive and produce primordia, of the nature of eggs, or the seeds of plants, or the fruit of trees, although for a whole month and more they had exhibited nothing in the uterus, the conception being perfected about the 18th, at furthest, the 21st of November, and having its seat now in the right, now in the left horn, occasionally in both at once. The ovum at this time is full of a colliquate matter, transparent, crystalline, similar to that fluid which in the hen’s egg we have called the colliquament or eye, of far greater purity than that fluid in which the embryo by and by floats, and contained within a proper tunic of extreme tenuity, and orbicular in form. In the middle of the ovum, vascular ramifications and the punctum saliens--the first or rudimentary particle of the fœtus--and nothing else, are clearly to be perceived. This is the first genital part, which, once constituted, is not only already possessed by the vegetative, but also by the motive soul; and from this are all the other parts of the fœtus, each in its order, generated, fashioned, disposed, and endowed with life, almost in the same manner as we have described the chick to be produced from the colliquament of the egg.

Both of the humours mentioned are present in the conceptions of all viviparous animals, and are regarded by many as the excrements of the fœtus,--one the urine, the other the sweat, although neither of them has any unpleasant taste, and they are always and at all periods present in conceptions, even before a particle of the fœtus has been produced.

Of the membranes investing the two fluids, of which there are only two, the outer is called the chorion, the inner the amnion. The chorion includes the whole conception, and extends into either cornu; the amnion swimming in the midst of the liquid of the former, is found in one of the horns only, except in the cases where there is a twin conception, when there is an amnion present in each of them; just as in a twin-fraught egg there are two colliquaments. Where there are two fœtuses consequently, both are contained in one common conception, in one egg, as it were, with its two separate collections of crystalline fluid included. If you incise the external membrane at any point, the more turbid fluid which it contains immediately escapes from either horn of the uterus; but the crystalline liquid in the interior of the amnion does not escape at the same time unless the membrane have been simultaneously implicated.

The vein which is first discerned in the crystalline fluid within the amnion takes its rise from the punctum saliens, and assumes the nature and duty of an umbilical vessel; increasing by degrees it expands into various ramifications distributed through the colliquament, so that it seems certain that the nourishment is in the first instance derived from the colliquament alone in which the fœtus swims.

I have exhibited this point to his serene highness the king, still palpitating in the uterus laid open; it was extremely minute indeed, and without the advantage of the sun’s light falling upon it from the side, its tremulous motions were not to be perceived.

When the ovum with the colliquament entire was placed in a silver or pewter basin filled with tepid water, the punctum saliens became beautifully distinct to the spectators. In the course of the next ensuing days, a mucilage or jelly, like a tiny worm, and having the shape of a maggot, is found to be added; this is the rudiment of the future body. It is divided into two parts, one of which is the head, the other the trunk, precisely in the same way as we have already seen it in the generation of the chick in ovo. The spine, like a keel, is somewhat bent; the head is indifferently made up of three small vesicles or globules, and swimming in transparent water grows amain, and by degrees assumes its proper shape. There is only this to be observed, that the eye in embryos of oviparous animals is much larger and more conspicuous than that of viviparous animals.

After the 26th of November the fœtus is seen with its body nearly perfect, in one case in the right in another in the left horn of the uterus; in twin cases in both horns.

At this time, too, the male embryo is readily distinguishable from the female by means of the organs of generation. These parts are also very conspicuous in the human embryo, and make their appearance at the same time as the trachea.

Males and females are met with indifferently in the right and left horn of the uterus. I have, however, more frequently found females in the right, males in the left horn; and I have made the same observation in does that carried twins, as well as in the sheep. It is certain, therefore, that the right or left side has no appropriate virtue in conferring sex; neither is the uterus, nor yet the mother herself, the fashioner or framer of the fœtus, any more than the hen is of the pullet in the egg which she incubates. In the same way as the pullet is formed and fashioned in the egg by an internal and inherent agent, is the fœtal form produced from the uterine ovum of the hind and doe.

It is indeed matter of astonishment to find a fœtus formed and perfected within the amnion in so short a space of time after the first appearance of the blood and punctum saliens. On or about the 19th or 20th day of November this punctum first becomes visible; on the 21st the shapeless vermiculus or maggot that is to form the body of the future animal is perceived; and in the course of from six to seven days afterwards a fœtus so perfect in all its parts is seen, that a male can be distinguished from a female by the organs of generation, and the feet are formed, the hooves being cleft, the whole having a mucous consistency and a pale yellowish colour.

The substance of the uterus begins to be extenuated immediately after the appearance of the embryo; contrary to what takes place in the human female, whose uterus grows every day thicker and fleshier with the advancing growth of the fœtus. In the hind and doe, on the other hand, the more the embryo augments the more do the cornua of the uterus assimilate themselves to the intestines; that horn in particular in which the fœtus is contained looks like a bag or pouch, and exceeds the opposite one in dimensions.

The ovum or conception, thus far advanced, and with its included fœtus perfectly distinct, has still contracted no adhesions to its mother’s sides: the whole can most readily be withdrawn from the uterus, as I have ascertained with an ovum which contained a fœtus nearly the length of the thumb. It is manifest, therefore, that the fœtus up to this period has been nourished by the albumen alone that is contained within the conception; in the same way as we have ascertained the process to go on within the hen’s egg. The mouths of the umbilical veins are lost and obliterated between the albumen and neighbouring humours of the conception and their containing membranes; but nowhere is there as yet any connexion with the uterus, although by these veins alone is nourishment supplied to the embryo. And as in the egg the ramifications of the veins are first sent to the colliquament, (in the same way as the roots of trees penetrate the ground,) and afterwards take their course to the external tunic called the chorion, whereon, for the sake of the nourishment, they are dispersed in an infinity of ramifications through the albuminous fluid contained within the outer membrane, so have I observed veins in the chorion of a human abortion; and Aristotle[341] also states “that membrane to be crowded with veins.”

If the fœtus be single its umbilical vessels are distributed to both horns, and a few twigs are also sent to the intervening body of the uterus; but if the conception be double, one in either horn, each sends its umbilical vessels to its own horn alone; the embryo in the right horn deriving nourishment from the right part of the conception, that in the left from the left portion of the same. In other respects the twin-conception here is precisely similar to the twin-conception of the egg.

Towards the end of November, then, all the parts are clearly and distinctly to be distinguished, and the fœtus is now of the size of a large bean or nutmeg; its occiput is prominent, as in the chick, but its eyes are smaller; the mouth extends from ear to ear, the cheeks and lips, as consisting of membranous parts, being perfected at a very late period. In the fœtuses of all animals, indeed, that of man inclusive, the oral aperture without lips or cheeks is seen stretching from ear to ear; and this is the reason, unless I much mistake, why so many are born with the upper lip divided as it is in the hare and camel, whence the common name of hare-lip for the deformity. In the development of the human fœtus the upper lip only coalesces in the middle line at a very late period.

I have frequently put a fœtus the size of a large bean, swimming in its extremely pure nutritive fluid within the transparent amnion, into a silver basin filled with the clearest water, and have noted these particulars as most worthy of observation:--The brain of somewhat greater consistency than white of egg, like milk moderately coagulated, and of an irregular shape, and without any covering of skull, is contained within a general investing membrane. The cerebellum projects in a peak, as in the chick. The conical mass of the heart is of a white colour, and all the other viscera, the liver inclusive, are white and spermatic-looking. The trunk of the umbilical veins arises from the heart, and passing the convexity of the liver, perforates the trunk of the vena portæ, whence, advancing a little and subdividing into a great number of branches, it is distributed to the colliquament and tunica choroidea in innumerable fine filaments. The sides of the body ascend on either hand from the spine, so that the thorax presents itself in the guise of a boat or small vessel, up to the period at which the heart and lungs are included within its area, precisely and in all respects as we have seen it in the development of the chick. The heart, intestines, and other viscera, are very conspicuous, and present themselves as appendages of the body, until the thorax and abdomen being drawn around them, and the roof, as it were, put on the building, they are concealed within the compages of these cavities. At this time the sides both of the thorax and abdomen are white, gelatinous, and apparently identical in structure, save that a number of slender white lines are perceived in the walls of the thorax, as indications of the future ribs, whereby a distinction is here made between the bony and fleshy compages of the cavity.

I have also occasionally observed in conceptions of the sheep, which were sometimes twin, sometimes single, of corresponding age and about a finger’s breadth in length, that the form of the embryo resembled a small lizard of the size of a wasp or caterpillar; the spine being curved into a circle, and the head almost in contact with the tail. In the double conceptions both were of the same size, as if produced at once and simultaneously; each floated distinctly within the fluid of its own amnion; but although one lay in the right, the other in the left horn of the uterus, they were still both included in the same double sac or wallet, both belonged to the same ovum, and were surrounded by the same common external fluid. The mouth was large, but the eyes were mere points, so that they could scarcely be seen, very different, therefore, from what occurs among birds. The viscera in these embryos were also pendulous without the body,--not yet inclosed within the appropriate cavities. The outer membrane or chorion adhered in no way to the uterus, so that the entire conception was readily removed. Within the substance of the chorion innumerable branches of the umbilical vessels were conspicuous, but having no connexion whatsoever with the walls of the uterus; a circumstance to which allusion has already been made in the case of the deer; the distribution was in fact very much as we have found it on the external tunic of the hen’s egg. There were but two humours, and the same number of containing tunics, of which the chorion extending through both cornua, and full of a more turbid fluid, gave general configuration to the ovum or conception. The tunica amnios again is almost invisible, like the tunica arachnoides of the eye, and embraces the crystalline humour in which the embryo floats.

The fluid of the amnion was, in proportion, but a hundredth, or shall I say a thousandth, to that of the chorion; although the crystalline humour of the amnion was still in such quantity that no one could reasonably imagine it to be the sweat of the very small embryo that floated within it. It was, further, extremely limpid, and seemed to be without anything like bad taste or smell. It was, as we have already observed of the deer, in all respects like watery milk, and had none of the obnoxious qualities of an excrement. I add, that if this fluid were of an excrementitious nature it ought to increase in quantity with the growth of the fœtus. But I have found precisely the opposite of this to obtain in the conception of the ewe, so that shortly before she lambs there is scarce a drop of the fluid in question remaining. I am, therefore, rather inclined to regard it as aliment than as excrement.

The internal tunic of the uterus of the ewe is covered with caruncles innumerable, as the heavens are with stars. These are not unlike crabs’ eyes, and I have called them by this name; but they are smaller, like pendulous warts, glandular and white, sticking within the coats of the uterus, and somewhat excavated towards the conception; otherwise than in the deer, consequently, in which the caruncles corresponding to these rather project towards the embryo. These caruncles are gorged with blood, and their inner surface, where they regard the conception, is perceived to be beset with black sanguineous points. The umbilical vessels of the embryo were not yet connected with these caruncles, nor did the conception itself adhere to the uterus.

I find nothing of an allantois, of which something has been said as a tunic distinct from the chorion, in the conception of the ewe. At a later period, indeed, when the embryo is larger, when the ovum or conception has contracted adhesions with the uterus, and the umbilical vessels have penetrated the caruncles, the chorion extends further, and at its extremities on either side, and as it were in a couple of appendices, there is a certain fluid of a yellow colour, which you might call excrementitious, kept separate and distinct.

The human conception scarcely differs in any respect from an egg during the first months of pregnancy. I have observed a clear fluid, like the more liquid white of an egg, to be included within an extremely delicate membrane. At this time the placenta had not yet appeared, and the entire conception was of the size of a pigeon’s, or perhaps a pheasant’s egg. The embryo itself, of the length of the little finger nail, and having the form of a small frog, was conspicuous enough. The body was broad, the oral aperture widely cleft, the legs and arms like the stalks of flowers just risen above the ground, the occiput prominent, or rather forming a vesicle appended to the rest of the head, such as we have described the rudiments of the future cerebellum in the chick.

In another human conception of about the fiftieth day, the ovum was as large as a hen’s or a turkey’s egg. The embryo was as long as a large bean, the head of very large relative dimensions, and dominated by the cerebellum as by a kind of crest. The brain itself was of the consistence of curdled milk. Instead of a cranium there was a coriaceous membrane, in some places cartilaginous, and divided down the forehead to the roots of the nostrils; the face looked like the muzzle of a dog. There were no external ears, nor any nose, yet could the rudiments of the trachea passing down to the lungs, and those of the penis, be detected. The two auricles of the heart presented themselves like eyes, of a black colour.

In the body of a woman who died of fever I found an hermaphrodite embryo nearly of the same size. The pudendum was like that of the rabbit, the labia standing for prepuce, the nymphæ for glans. In the upper part the root of the penis was also apparent, and on either side for the testicle there was the lax skin of the scrotum. The uterus was extremely diminutive, and in figure like that of the ewe or mole, with two horns. And as the prostate glands are situated near the penis of the boy, so were the testicles (ovaries) of visible dimensions, seen adjacent to these cornua. Externally considered, the sex seemed that of the male; internally, however, it was rather that of the female. The uterus of the mother was of great size, having the urinary bladder connected with it as an appendage. In the embryo, on the contrary, the bladder was large with the uterus of very small dimensions attached to it.

All the human ova that have been described above were, like those of the ewe, shaggy externally, and besmeared with a kind of gelatine, or glutinous matter. At this epoch, too, there was neither any placenta apparent, nor any visible connexion with the uterus; neither was there any implantation into the substance of the uterus of the umbilical vessels scattered over the surface of the conception itself.

As in the deer, so in the sheep, goat, and other bisulcated animals, do we find more than one fœtus in the same conception, just as in twin-fraught eggs we find two chicks surrounded by the same albumen. But in the dog, rabbit, hog, and other viviparous animals that produce a considerable number at a litter, the thing is otherwise. In these each fœtus has two humours, these being severally surrounded with their proper membranes.

In the bitch there are a number of knots or constrictions along the whole course of either cornu of the uterus, between each of which the appropriate humours and a single embryo are contained. In the hare and rabbit we observe a number of balls, like the eggs of serpents, so that the horns of the uterus look like a pair of bracelets composed of so many amber beads strung upon a thread. The conception of the hare bears a strong resemblance to an acorn, the placenta embracing the embryo like a cup, and the humours inclosed in their membranes depending like the gland or nut.

EXERCISE THE SEVENTIETH.

Of the conception of the deer in the course of the month of December.

In the beginning of December the fœtus is seen larger, every way more perfect, and the length of the finger. The heart and other viscera which formerly hung externally are now concealed within the cavities of the body, so that they can no longer be seen without dissection.

The conception, or ovum, by the medium of the five caruncles which we have already spoken of as present in either cornu, is now in connexion with the uterus at an equal number of points; still the union is not so strong but that a very slight rather than a great effort suffices to break it. When the conception is detached, we perceive points or depressions on the surface of the chorion at the places where the adhesions to the uterus had existed, these spots being further covered with a certain viscid and wrinkled matter, as if this had been the bond of union between the mother and the ovum. Thus have we the nature and use of these caruncles made known to us: seen in the first instance as fungi or excrescences growing from the sides of the uterus, they are now recognized in connexion with the conception, as standing instead of the placenta or uterine cake in the human subject, and performing the same office. These caruncles are in fact but as so many nipples, whence the embryo by means of its umbilical vessels receives the nourishment that is supplied by the mother, as shall be clearly shown by what is to follow.

The size and capacity of the uterus, by which name we understand the cornua, or place occupied by the conception, is increased in proportion to the growth of the embryo; in suchwise, however, that the horn in which the fœtus is lodged is larger than the other.

The conception or ovum is single, whether one or several embryos are evolved from it; and it extends, as already said, into both of the horns, so that it presents itself with the shape of a double pudding, or rather of a single pudding having a constriction in its middle. Proceeding rounded and slender from the upper extremity of one of the horns, the conception gradually enlarges, and is produced into that common cavity which in the human female is called the uterus or matrix; (because, by conceiving and cherishing her offspring in this place the woman is made a mother;) the conception of the deer, passing through a kind of isthmus in the body of the uterus, is narrowed; but by and by, escaping into the other cornu, it there expands at first, but anon contracts again, and finally ends as it began in a tapering extremity. The whole conception, therefore, taken out entire, resembles a wallet filled with water on either side; and hence the chorion is also called allantois, because the conception in the lower animals, such as the deer, looks like an intestine inflated, or stuffed and tied in the middle.

In the embryo anatomized at this period every internal part is seen distinct and perfect; particularly the stomach, intestines, heart, kidneys, and lungs, which, divided into lobes, but having the proper form of the organs, look bloody. The colour of the lungs is deeper than it is in those fœtuses that have breathed, because the lungs, dilated by the act of respiration, assume a whiter tint. And by this indication is it known whether a mother has brought forth a living or dead child; in the former case the colour of the lungs is changed, and the change remains though the infant have died immediately afterwards.

In the female fœtus the testes--improperly so called--are seen situated near the kidneys at the extremities of the cornua uteri on either side; they are relatively of larger size than in the adult, and, like the caruncles of the uterus, look white.

In the stomach of the fœtus there is a watery fluid contained, not unlike that in which it swims, but somewhat more turbid or less transparent. It resembles the milk that begins to be secreted in the breasts of pregnant women about the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, and may be pressed out of the nipples, or it is like the drink which we call white posset.

In the small intestines there is an abundance of chyle concocted from the same matter; in the colon greenish fæces and scybala begin to appear.

I do not find the urachus perforate; neither do I perceive any difference between the tunica allantoides or allantois, which is said to contain urine, and the chorion. Neither do I detect any urine in the secundines, but only in the bladder, where indeed it is present in large quantity. The bladder, of an oblong form, is situated between the umbilical arteries as they proceed from the bifurcation of the descending aorta.

The liver is rudely sketched and almost shapeless, as if it were a mere accidental part; it looks like a red coloured mass of extravasated blood. The brain, with some pretensions to regularity of outline, is contained within the dura mater. The eyes are concealed under the eyelids, which are as firmly glued together as we find them in puppies for some short time after birth, so that I found it scarcely possible to separate them and open the eyes. The breast-bones and ribs have a certain degree of firmness, and the colour of the muscles changes from white to blood red.

By the great number of dissections which I performed in the course of this month, I was every day confirmed in my opinion that the carunculæ of the uterus perform the office of the placenta; they are at this time found of a reddish colour, turgid, and of the size of walnuts. The conception, which had previously adhered to the caruncles by the medium of mucor or glutinous matter only, now sends the branches of its umbilical vessels into them, as plants send their roots into the ground, by which it is fastened and may be said to grow to the uterus.

About the end of December the fœtus is a span long, and I have seen it moving lustily and kicking; opening and shutting its mouth; the heart, inclosed in the pericardium, when exposed, was found pulsating strongly and visibly; its ventricles, however, were still uniform, of equal amplitude of cavity and thickness of parietes; and each ending in a separate apex, they form together a double-pointed cone. Occasionally I have seen the fluid contained in the auricles of the heart, which at this time present themselves as ample sacs filled with blood, continuing to pulsate for some short time after the ventricles themselves had left off contracting.

The internal organs, all of which had lately become perfect, were now larger and more conspicuous. The skull was partly cartilaginous, partly osseous. The hooves were yellowish, flexible, and soft, resembling those of the adult animal softened in hot water. The uterine caruncles, of great magnitude and like immense fungi, extended over the whole cavity of the uterus, and plainly performed the office of placentæ, for numerous and ample branches of the umbilical vessels penetrated their substance there to imbibe nutritive matter for the growth of the embryo. As in the fœtus after birth, the chyle is now carried by the mesenteric veins to the porta of the liver.

Where there is a single fœtus the umbilical vessels are distributed to the whole of the carunculse, both those of the horn where the fœtus is lodged and those of the opposite horn; where there is a pair of embryos formed, the umbilical vessels of each only extend to the caruncles of the horn appropriated to it.

The smaller umbilical veins in tending towards the fœtus, form larger and larger trunks by coalescing, until at length two great canals are formed, which in conjunction pour their blood into the vena cava and vena portæ. But the umbilical arteries, which arise from the division of the descending aorta, form two trunks of small size, not remarkable save for their pulse: proceeding to the boundary of the conception, in other words, to the conjunction of the placenta or carunculæ with the ramifications of the umbilical veins, they first divide into numerous capillary twigs, and then are lost in others that are invisible.

As the extremities of the umbilical veins within the uterus terminate in the caruncles, so the uterine vessels on the outside, which are large and numerous, and bring the blood from the mother towards the uterus, by means of the vessels of the suspensory ligaments, terminate externally on the caruncles. It is to be noted, also, that the internal vessels are almost all veins; the external vessels, again, are in many instances branches of arteries. In the placenta of the woman, if it be carefully examined immediately after delivery, a much larger number of arteries than of veins, and these of larger size, will be found dispersed on every side in innumerable subdivisions to the very edge of the mass. In the same kind of spongy parenchyma of the spleen, the number of the arteries is also greater than that of the veins.

The exterior uterine vessels run to the uterus, as I have said, not to the ovaries (testiculi) situated in the suspensory ligament, as some suppose.

I have remarked an admirable instance of the skill of nature, in the bulge or convexity of the caruncles turned towards the conception: a quantity of white and mucilaginous matter is discovered in a number of cavities, cotyledons, or little cups; these are all as full of this matter as we ever see waxen cells full of honey; now this matter, in colour, consistency, and taste, is extremely like white of egg. On tearing the conception away from the caruncles, you will perceive numbers of suckers or capillary branches of the umbilical veins, looking like lengthened filaments, extracted at the same time from every one of the cotyledons and pits, and from amidst their mucilaginous contents; very much as we see the delicate filaments of the roots of herbs following the stem when it is pulled out of the ground.

It is clearly ascertained from this that the extremities of the umbilical vessels are not conjoined by any anastomosis with the extremities of the uterine vessels; that they do not imbibe any blood from them, but that they end and are obliterated in that mucilaginous matter, and from it take up their nourishment, nearly in the same way as at an earlier period they had sought for aliment from the albuminous humour contained within the membranes of the conception. In the same manner, consequently, as the chick in ovo is nourished by the white of the egg through its umbilical vessels, is the fœtus of the hind and doe nourished by a similar albuminous matter laid up in these cells, and not directly from the blood of the mother.

These carunculæ might therefore with propriety be called the uterine liver, or the uterine mammæ, seeing that they are organs adapted for the preparation and concoction of that albuminous aliment, and fitting it for absorption by the veins. In those viviparous animals consequently that have neither caruncles nor placentæ, as the horse and the hog, the fœtus is nourished up to the moment of its birth by fluids contained within the conception or ovum; nor has the ovum in these animals at any time a connexion with the uterus.

From all of what precedes it is manifest that in both the classes of viviparous animals alluded to, those, namely, that are provided with carunculæ or cotyledons, and those that want them, and perhaps in viviparous animals generally, the fœtus in utero is not nourished otherwise than the chick in ovo; the nutritive matter, the albumen, being of the same identical kind in all. As in the egg the terminations of the umbilical vessels are in the white and yelk, so in the hind and doe, and other animals furnished with uterine cotyledons like them, the final distributions of the umbilical vessels are sent to the humours that are included within the conception or ovum, and to the albumen that is stored in the cotyledons, or cup-like cavities of the carunculæ, where they open and end. And this is further obvious from the fact of the extremities of the umbilical vessels, when they are drawn out of the afore-mentioned mucor, looking completely white; a certain proof that they absorb this mucilage liquefied only, and not blood. The same arrangement may very readily be observed to obtain in the egg.

The human placenta is rendered uneven on its convex surface, and where it adheres to the uterus, by a number of tuberous projections, and it seems indeed to adhere to the uterus by means of these; it is not consequently attached at every point, but at those places only where the vessels pierce it in search of nourishment, and at those where, in consequence of this arrangement, an appearance as if of vessels broken short off is perceived. But whether the extremities of these vessels suck up blood from the uterus, or rather a certain concocted matter of the nature of albumen, as I have described the thing in the hind and doe, I have not yet ascertained.

Finally, that the truth just announced may be still more fully confirmed, it is found that by compressing the uterine caruncles between the fingers, about a spoonful of the nutritive fluid in question may be obtained from each of them, as from a nipple, unmixed with blood, which is not obtained even with forcible pressure. Moreover, the caruncle thus milked and emptied, like a compressed sponge, contracts and becomes flaccid, and is seen to be pierced with a great number of holes. From everything, therefore, it appears that these caruncles are uterine mammæ, or fountains and receptacles of nutritive albumen.

The month of December at an end, the caruncles adhere less firmly to the uterus than before, and a small matter suffices to detach them. The larger the fœtus grows, indeed, the nearer it is to its term, the more readily are the caruncles detached from the uterus, so that, like ripe fruit from the tree, they slip at length from the uterus of themselves, and as if they had formed an original element in the conception.

Separated from the uterus you may perceive in the prints which they leave points pouring out blood; these are the arteries that entered them. But if you now detach the conception from the caruncles, no blood is effused; none escapes, save from the ends of the vessels proceeding from the conception, although it does seem more consonant with reason to suppose that blood should be shed from the caruncles than from the conception when they are forcibly separated. For, as the caruncles or cotyledons have an abundance of uterine branches distributed to them, and they are generally believed to receive blood for the nourishment of the fœtus, we should expect that they would appear replete with blood. Nevertheless, as I have said, they yield no blood either under milking or compression, and the reason of this is that they contain albumen rather than blood, and rather store up than prepare this matter. It seems manifest, therefore, that the fœtus in utero is not nourished by its mother’s blood, but by this albuminous fluid duly elaborated. It may even be perhaps that the adult animal is not nourished immediately by the blood, but rather by something mixed with the blood, which serves as the ultimate aliment; as may perhaps be more particularly shown in our PHYSIOLOGY and particular treatise on the Blood.

The truth of that passage of Hippocrates[342] where it said that “those whose acetabula or cotyledons are full of mucor, abort,” has always been suspected by me; for this is no excrementitious matter or cause of miscarriage, but nourishment and a source of life. But Hippocrates, by the word acetabula, perhaps, understood something else than the parts so called in the uterus of the lower animals, for they are wanting in women; nor does the placenta in the human subject contain any collections of albuminous matter in distinct cavities.

Modern medical writers, following the Arabians, speak of three nutritious humours--dew, gluten, and cambium; these Fernelius designates nutritious juices; as if he had wished to imply that the parts of our bodies were not immediately nourished by the blood as ultimate nutriment, but by these secondary juices. The first of them, like dew, bathes all the minutest particles of the body on every side: this fluid, become thicker by an ulterior concoction, and adhering to the parts, is called gluten; finally, altered and assimilated by the proper virtue of the part, it is called cambium.

He who espoused such views might designate the matter which is contained in the cotyledonous cavities of the deer as gluten or nutritious albumen, and maintain that as the ultimate nourishment destined for each of the particular parts of the fœtus it was analogous to the albumen or vitellus of the egg. For as we but lately stated, with Aristotle, that the yelk of the egg was analogous to milk, so do we think it not unreasonable to assert, that the matter lodged in the cotyledons, or acetabula of the uterine placenta, stands instead of milk to the fœtus so long as it remains in the uterus; in this way the caruncles approve themselves a kind of internal mammæ, the nutritive matter of which, transferred at the period of parturition to the proper mammæ, there assumes the nature of milk, an arrangement by which the fœtus is seen to be nourished with the same food after it has begun its independent existence, as it was whilst it lodged in the uterus. Between the two-coloured eggs of oviparous animals, consequently, or the eggs that consist of a white and a yelk, and the ova or conceptions of viviparous animals, there is only this difference, that in the former the vitellus (which is a secondary nutritive matter) is prepared within the egg, and at the period of birth, being stored within the abdomen of the young creature, serves it as food; whilst in the latter, the nutritive juice is laid up within acetabula, and after birth is transferred to the mammæ; so that the chick is nourished with milk inclosed in its interior, whilst the fœtus of the viviparous animal draws its nourishment from the breasts of its mother.

In the months of January, February, &c., as nothing new or worthy of note occurs which has not been already mentioned, (more than the growth of the hair, teeth, horns, &c.) but the parts only grow larger without reference to the process of generation, it seems unnecessary to say more upon such points at present.

I have frequently examined the conceptions of sheep during the same intervals. These I find, as in the deer, extending into both horns of the uterus, and presenting the figure of a wallet or double sausage. In several of them I found two fœtuses; in others only one: they were without a trace of wool on the surface, and the eyelids were so closely glued together that they could not be opened; the hooves, however, were present. Where there were two embryos they were contained in the opposite horns of the uterus, and without any regard to sex with reference to the right or left horn, the male being sometimes in the right, sometimes in the left, and the female the same; both, however, were, in every instance, included within one and the same common external membrane or chorion. The extreme ends of this membrane were stained on either hand with a yellow or bilious excrement, and appeared to contain something turbid or excrementitious in their interior.

Many caruncles, or miniature placentas of different sizes, were discovered, and otherwise disposed than in the hind and doe. In the sheep they look like rounded fungi with the foot-stalks broken off, and are contained in the coats of the uterus; their rounded or convex aspects are turned to the uterus, (a circumstance, by the way, common to the cow and sheep,) their concave aspects, which are the smooth ones, being turned towards the fœtus. The larger branches of the vessels are also distributed to the concave portion, as in the human placenta. The branches in extension of the umbilical vessels connected with the caruncles, grow pretty firmly into them, so that when I attempted to separate them the rounded portion was rather torn from the interior of the uterus than from the ovum or conception; different, consequently, from what we observed in the deer, where the chorion was readily detached from the cotyledons of the caruncules, and where the convexity of the caruncule, connected with the conception, is separable, whilst the concavity, or rather the pedicle or root, is firmly adherent to the uterus. In other respects the function seems to be the same in both cases; in both the same acetabula are discovered, and the same viscid and albuminous mucus can be pressed out in both, as it can also in the cow.

In the conception that contains a single fœtus, the umbilical vessels are distributed to the whole of the caruncules of either horn; but the one in which the fœtus itself is contained, swimming in its crystalline fluid within the amnion, is larger than the other. In the cases where there are two fœtuses present, each has its own separate or appropriate caruncles, and does not send its umbilical vessels in quest of nourishment beyond the cornu in which it is lodged.

In male fœtuses, the testes contained in the scrotum, of large size for the age, hang externally. Female fœtuses, again, have their dugs in the same situation, furnished with nipples like the breasts of women.

In the compound stomach of the fœtus, namely the omasus and abomasus, a clear fluid is discovered, similar to that in which it floats; the two liquids agreeing obviously in smell, taste, and consistency. There is also a quantity of chyle in the upper part of the intestinal tube; in the inferior portion a greenish-coloured excrement and scybala, such as we find when the animal is feeding on grass. The liver is discovered of considerable size, the gall-bladder of an oblong shape, and in some cases empty.

In so far as the order in which the several parts are produced is concerned, we have still found the same rule to be observed in the hind and doe as in the egg, and we believe that the same law obtains among viviparous animals generally.

EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-FIRST.

Of the innate heat.

As frequent mention is made in the preceding pages of the calidum innatum, or innate heat, I have determined to say a few words here, by way of dessert, both on that subject and on the humidum primigenium, or radical moisture, to which I am all the more inclined because I observe that many pride themselves upon the use of these terms without, as I apprehend, rightly understanding their meaning. There is, in fact, no occasion for searching after spirits foreign to, or distinct from, the blood; to evoke heat from another source; to bring gods upon the scene, and to encumber philosophy with any fanciful conceits; what we are wont to derive from the stars is in truth produced at home: the blood is the only calidum innatum, or first engendered animal heat; a fact which so clearly appears from our observations on animal reproduction, particularly of the chick from the egg, that it seems superfluous to multiply illustrations.

There is, indeed, nothing in the animal body older or more excellent than the blood; nor are the spirits which are distinguished from the blood at any time found distinct from it; for the blood without heat or spirit is no longer blood, but cruor or gore. “The blood,” says Aristotle,[343] “is hot in a certain manner, in that, namely, in virtue of which it exists as blood,--just as we speak of hot-water under a single term; as subject, however, and in itself finally, blood is blood, it is not hot: so that as blood is in a certain way hot per se, so is it also in a certain way not hot per se: heat is in its essence or nature, in the same way as whiteness is in the essence of a white man; but where blood is by affection or passion, it is not hot per se.”

We physicians at this time designate that as spirit which Hippocrates called impetum faciens, or moving power; implying by this whatever attempts aught by its own proper effort, and causes motion with rapidity and force, or induces action of any kind; in this sense we are accustomed to speak of spirit of wine, spirit of vitriol, &c. And therefore it is that physicians admit as many spirits as there are principal parts or operations of the body, viz. animal, vital, natural, visual, auditory, concoctive, generative, implanted, influent, &c. &c. But the blood is the first produced and most principal part of the body, endowed with each and all of these virtues, possessed of powers of action beyond all the rest, and therefore, κατ’ ἐξοχὴ--in virtue of its pre-eminence, meriting the title of spirit.

Scaliger, Fernelius, and others, giving less regard to the admirable qualities of the blood, have imagined other spirits of an aerial or ethereal nature, or composed of an ethereal or elementary matter, a something more excellent and divine than the innate heat, the immediate instrument of the soul, fitted for all the highest duties. Now their principal motive for this was the consideration that the blood, as composed of elements, could have no power of action beyond these elements or the bodies compounded of them. They have, therefore, feigned or imagined a spirit, different from the ingenerate heat, of celestial origin and nature; a body of perfect simplicity, most subtile, attenuated, mobile, rapid, lucid, ethereal, participant in the qualities of the quintessence. They have not, however, anywhere demonstrated the actual existence of such a spirit, or that it was superior to the elements in its powers of action, or indeed that it could accomplish more than the blood by itself. We, for our own parts, who use our simple senses in studying natural things, have been unable anywhere to find anything of the sort. Neither are there any cavities for the production and preservation of such spirits, either in fact or presumed by their authors. Fernelius, indeed, has these words:[344] “He who has not yet completely mastered the matter and state of the ingenerate heat, let him cast an eye upon the structure of the body, and turn to the arteries, and contemplate the sinuses of the heart and the ventricles of the brain. When he observes them empty, containing next to no fluid, and yet feels that he must own such parts not made in vain, or without a design, he will soon, I conceive, be brought to conclude that an extremely subtile aura or vapour fills them during the life of the animal, and which, as being of extreme lightness, vanished insensibly when the creature died. It is for the sake of cherishing this aura that by inspiration we take in air, which not only serves for the refrigeration of the body, by a business that might be otherwise accomplished, but further supplies a kind of nourishment.”

But we maintain that so long as an animal lives, the cavities of the heart and the arteries are filled with blood. We further believe the ventricles of the brain to be indifferently fitted for any so excellent office, and that they are rather formed for secreting some excrementitious matter. What shall we say, too, when we find the brain of many animals unfurnished with ventricles? And supposing it were true that any kind of air or vapour was found there, seeing that all nature abhors a vacuum, still it does not seem over probable that it should be of heavenly origin and possessed of such superlative virtues. But what we admire most of all is that a spirit, the native of the skies, and endowed with such admirable qualities, should be nourished by our common and elementary air; especially when we see it maintained that the elements can do nothing that is beyond their natural powers.

It is admitted, moreover, that the spirits are in a perpetual state of flux, and most readily dissipated and corrupted; nor indeed can they endure for an instant unless renovated by due supplies of their appropriate nutriment,--they as much require incessant nourishing as the primum vivens, or first animate atom of the body. What occasion is there, then, I ask, for this extraneous inmate, for this ethereal heat? when the blood is competent to perform all the offices ascribed to it, and the spirits cannot separate from the blood even by a hair’s breadth without destruction; without the blood, indeed, the spirits can neither move nor penetrate anywhere as distinct and independent matters. And whether they are engendered and are fed and increased, as some suppose, from the thinner part of the blood, or from the primigenial moisture, as others imagine, all still confess that they are nowhere to be found apart from the blood, but are inseparably connected with it as the aliment that sustains them, even as the flame of a lamp or candle is inseparably connected with the oil or tallow that feeds it. The tenuity, subtilty, mobility, &c. of the spirits, therefore, bring no kind of advantage more than the blood, which it seems they constantly accompany, already possesses. The blood consequently suffices, and is adequate to be the immediate instrument of the soul, inasmuch as it is everywhere present, and moves hither and thither with the greatest rapidity. Nor can it be admitted that there are any other bodies or qualities of a spiritual and incorporeal nature, or any more divine kinds of heat, such as light, as Cæsar Cremoninus,[345] a great adept in the Aristotelian philosophy, strenuously contends against Albertus that there are.

If it be said that these spirits reside in the primigenial moisture as in their ultimate aliment, and flow from thence through the whole body to nourish its several parts, they propound a simple impossibility, viz. that the ingenerate heat, that primigenial element of the body, nourished itself, yet serves for the nourishment of the body at large. Upon such grounds the thing nourished and the thing that nourishes would be one and the same, and itself would both nourish and be nourished; which could in no way be effected; inasmuch as it is by no means probable that the nourishment should ever be mixed with the thing nourished, for things mixed must have equal powers and mutually act on one another; and, according to Aristotle’s dictum, “where there is nutrition, there there is no mixture.” But as nutrition takes place everywhere, the nutriment is one thing, and that which is nourished by it is another, and it is altogether indispensable that the one pass into the other.

But as it is thought that the spirits, and the ultimate or primigenial aliment, or something else, is contained in animals which acts in a greater degree than the blood above the forces of the elements, we are not sufficiently informed what is understood by the expression, “acting above the forces of the elements;” neither are Aristotle’s words rightly interpreted where he says,[346] “every virtue or faculty of the soul appears to partake of another body more divine than those which are called elements.... For there is in every seed a certain something which causes it to be fruitful, viz. what is called heat, and that not fire or any faculty of the kind, but a spirit such as is contained in semen and frothy bodies; and the nature inherent in that spirit is responsive in its proportions to the element of the stars. Wherefore fire engenders no animal; neither is anything seen to be constituted of the dense, or moist, or dry. But the heat of the sun and of animals, and not only that which is stored up in semen, but even that of any excrementitious matter, although diverse in nature, still contains a vital principle. For the rest, it is obvious from this that the heat contained in animals is not fire, neither does it derive its origin from fire.” Now I maintain the same things of the innate heat and the blood; I say that they are not fire, and neither do they derive their origin from fire. They rather share the nature of some other, and that a more divine body or substance. They act by no faculty or property of the elements; but as there is a something inherent in the semen which makes it prolific, and as, in producing an animal, it surpasses the power of the elements,--as it is a spirit, namely, and the inherent nature of that spirit corresponds to the essence of the stars,--so is there a spirit, or certain force, inherent in the blood, acting superiorly to the powers of the elements, very conspicuously displayed in the nutrition and preservation of the several parts of the animal body; and the nature, yea, the soul in this spirit and blood, is identical with the essence of the stars. That the heat of the blood of animals during their lifetime, therefore, is neither fire, nor derived from fire, is manifest, and indeed is clearly demonstrated by our observations.

But that this may be made still more certain let me be permitted to digress a little from my subject, and, in a few words, to show what is meant by the word “spirit,” and what by the phrases “superior in action to the forces of the elements,” “to have the properties of another body, and that more divine than those bodies which are called elements,” and “the nature inherent in this spirit which answers to the essence of the stars.”

We have already had occasion to say something both of the nature of” spirit” and “ the vital principle,” and we shall here enter into the subject at greater length. There are three bodies--simple bodies--which seem especially entitled to receive the name, at all events, to perform the office of “spirit,” viz. fire, air, and water, each of which, by reason of its ceaseless flux and motion, expressed by the words flame, wind, and flood, appears to have the properties of life, or of some other body. Flame is the flow of fire, wind the flow of air, stream or flood the flow of water. Flame, like an animal, is self-motive, self-nutrient, self-augmentative, and is the symbol of our life. It is therefore that it is so universally brought into requisition in religious ceremonies: it was guarded by priestesses and virgins in the temples of Apollo and Vesta as a sacred thing, and from the remotest antiquity has been held worthy of divine worship by the Persians and other ancient nations; as if God were most conspicuous in flame, and spoke to us from fire as he did to Moses of old. Air is also appropriately spoken of as “spirit,” having received the title from the act of respiration. Aristotle[347] himself admits, “that there is a kind of life, and birth, and death of the winds.” Finally, we speak of a running stream as “living water.”

These three, therefore, inasmuch as they have a kind of life, appear to act superiorly to the forces of the element, and to share in a more divine nature; they were, therefore, placed among the number of the divinities by the heathen. When any excellent work or process appeared, surpassing the powers of the naked elements, it was held as proceeding from some more divine agent. “To act with power superior to the powers of the elements,” therefore, and, on that account, “to share in the properties of some more divine thing, which does not derive its origin from the elements,” appear to have the same signification.

The blood, in like manner, “acts with powers superior to the powers of the elements” in the fact of its existence, in the forms of primordial and innate heat, in semen and spirit, and its producing all the other parts of the body in succession; proceeding at all times with such foresight and understanding, and with definite ends in view, as if it employed reasoning in its acts. Now this it does not, in so far as it is elementary, and as deriving its origin from fire, but in so far as it is possessed of plastic powers and endowed with the gift of the vegetative soul, as it is the primordial and innate heat, and the immediate and competent instrument of life. Αίμα, τὸ ζωτικὸν τοῡ ἀνθρωπου: The blood is the living principle of man, says Suidas; and the same thing is true of all animals; an opinion which Virgil seems to have wished to express when he says:

“Una eademque via sanguisque animusque sequuntur.” And by one path the blood and life flowed out.

The blood, therefore, by reason of its admirable properties and powers, is “spirit.” It is also celestial; for nature, the soul, that which answers to the essence of the stars, is the inmate of the spirit, in other words, it is something analogous to heaven, the instrument of heaven, vicarious of heaven.

In this way all natural bodies fall to be considered under a twofold point of view, viz. either as they are specially regarded, and are comprehended within the limits of their own proper nature, or are viewed as the instruments of some more noble agent and superior power. For as regards their peculiar powers, there is, perhaps, no doubt but that all things subject to generation by birth, and to death and decay, derive their origin from the elements, and perform their offices agreeably to their proper standard; but in so far as they are the instruments of a more excellent agent, and are governed by that, not acting of their own proper nature, but by the regimen of another; therefore is it, therein is it, that they seem to participate with another and more divine body, and to surpass the powers of the ordinary elements.

In the same way, too, is the blood the animal heat, in so far, namely, as it is governed in its actions by the soul; for it is celestial as subservient to heaven; and divine, because it is the instrument of God the great and good. But this we have already spoken of above, where we have shown that male and female were the instruments of the sun, heaven, and Supreme Preserver, when they served for the generation of the more perfect animals.

The inferior world, according to Aristotle, is so continuous and connected with the superior orbits, that all its motions and changes appear to take their rise and to receive direction from thence. In that world, indeed, which the Greeks called Κόσμος from its order and beauty, inferior and corruptible things wait upon superior and incorruptible things; but all are still subservient to the will of the supreme, omnipotent, and eternal Creator.

They, therefore, who think that nothing composed of the elements can show powers of action superior to the forces exercised by these, unless they at the same time partake of some other and more divine body, and on this ground conceive the spirits they evoke as constituted partly of the elements, partly of a certain ethereal and celestial substance--these persons, I say, appear to me to reason indifferently. In the first place you will scarcely find any elementary body which in acting does not exceed its proper powers: air and water, the winds and the ocean, when they waft navies to either India and round this globe, and often by opposite courses, when they grind, bake, dig, pump, saw timber, sustain fire, support some things, overwhelm others, and suffice for an infinite variety of other and most admirable offices--who shall say that they do not surpass the powers of the elements? In like manner what does not fire accomplish? in the kitchen, in the furnace, in the laboratory, [in the steam-engine], softening, hardening, melting, subliming, changing, [and setting in motion], in an infinite variety of ways! What shall we say of it when we see iron itself produced by its agency?--iron “that breaks the stubborn soil, and shakes the earth with war!”--iron that in the magnet (to which Thales therefore ascribed a soul) attracts other iron, “subdues all other things, and seeks besides I know not what inane,” as Pliny[348] says; for the steel needle only rubbed with the loadstone still steadily points to the great cardinal points; and when our clocks constantly indicate the hours of the day and night,--shall we not admit that all of these partake of something else, and that of a more divine nature, than the elements? And if in the domain and rule of nature so many excellent operations are daily effected surpassing the powers of the things themselves, what shall we not think possible within the pale and regimen of nature, of which all art is but imitation? And if, as ministers of man, they effect such admirable ends, what, I ask, may we not expect of them, when they are instruments in the hand of God?

We must, therefore, make the distinction and say, that whilst no primary agent or prime efficient produces effects beyond its powers, every instrumental agent may exceed its own proper powers in action; for it acts not merely by its own virtue, but by the virtue of a superior efficient.

They, consequently, who refuse such remarkable faculties to the blood, and go to heaven to fetch down I know not what spirits, to which they ascribe these divine virtues, cannot know, or at all events, cannot consider that the process of generation, and even of nutrition, which indeed is a kind of generation, for the sake of which they are so lavish of admirable properties, surpasses the powers of those very spirits themselves, nor of the spirits only, but of the vegetative, aye, even the sensitive, and I will venture to add, the rational soul. Powers, did I say? It far exceeds even any estimate we can form of the rational soul; for the nature of generation, and the order that prevails in it, are truly admirable and divine, beyond all that thought can conceive or understanding comprehend.

That it may, however, more clearly appear that the remarkable virtues which the learned attribute to the spirits and the innate heat belong to the blood alone, besides what has already been spoken of as conspicuous in the egg before any trace of the embryo appears, as well as in the perfect and adult fœtus, the few following observations are made by way of further illustration, and for the sake of the diligent inquirer. The blood considered absolutely and by itself, without the veins, in so far as it is an elementary fluid, and composed of several parts--of thin and serous particles, and of thick and concrete particles called cruor--possesses but few, and these not very obvious virtues. Contained within the veins, however, inasmuch as it is an integral part of the body, and is animated, regenerative, and the immediate instrument and principal seat of the soul, inasmuch, moreover, as it seems to partake of the nature of another more divine body, and is transfused by divine animal heat, it obtains remarkable and most excellent powers, and is analogous to the essence of the stars. In so far as it is spirit, it is the hearth, the Vesta, the household divinity, the innate heat, the sun of the microcosm, the fire of Plato; not because like common fire it lightens, burns, and destroys, but because by a vague and incessant motion it preserves, nourishes, and aggrandizes itself. It farther deserves the name of spirit, inasmuch as it is radical moisture, at once the ultimate and the proximate and the primary aliment, more abundant than all the other parts; preparing for and administering to these the same nutriment with which itself is fed, ceaselessly permeating the whole body, cherishing and keeping alive the parts which it has fashioned and added to itself, not otherwise assuredly than the superior stars, the sun and moon especially, in maintaining their own proper orbits, continually vivify the stars that are beneath them.

Since the blood acts, then, with forces superior to the forces of the elements, and exerts its influence through these forces or virtues, and is the instrument of the Great Workman, no one can ever sufficiently extol its admirable, its divine faculties. In the first place, and especially, it is possessed by a soul which is not only vegetative, but sensitive and motive also; it penetrates everywhere and is ubiquitous; abstracted, the soul or the life too is gone, so that the blood does not seem to differ in any respect from the soul or the life itself (anima); at all events, it is to be regarded as the substance whose act is the soul or the life. Such, I say, is the soul, which is neither wholly corporeal nor yet wholly incorporeal; which is derived in part from abroad, and is partly produced at home; which in one way is part of the body, but in another way is the beginning and cause of all that is contained in the animal body, viz. nutrition, sense, and motion, and consequently of life and of death alike; for whatever is nourished, is itself vivified, and vice versa. In like manner, that which is abundantly nourished increases; what is not sufficiently supplied shrinks; what is perfectly nourished preserves its health; what is not perfectly nourished falls into disease. The blood, therefore, even as the soul, is to be regarded as the cause and author of youth and old age, of sleep and waking, and also of respiration; all the more and especially as the first instrument in natural things contains the internal moving cause within itself. It therefore comes to the same thing, whether we say that the soul and the blood, or the blood with the soul, or the soul with the blood, performs all the acts in the animal organism.

We are too much in the habit, neglecting things, of worshipping specious names. The word blood, signifying a substance, which we have before our eyes, and can touch, has nothing of grandiloquence about it; but before such titles as spirits, and calidum innatum or innate heat, we stand agape. But the mask removed, as the error disappears, so does the idle admiration. The celebrated stone, so much vaunted for its virtues by Pipinus to Migaldus, seems to have filled not only him but also Thuanus, an excellent historian, with wonder and admiration. Let me be allowed to append the riddle: “Lately,” says he, “there was brought from the East Indies to our king a stone, which we have seen, wonderfully radiant with light and effulgence, the whole of which, as if burning and in flames, was resplendent with an incredible brilliancy of light. Tossed hither and thither, it filled the ambient air with beams that were scarcely bearable by any eyes. It was also extremely impatient of the earth; if you essayed to cover it, it forthwith and of itself burst forth with violence, and mounted on high. No man could by any art contain or inclose it in any confined place; on the contrary, it appears to delight in free and spacious places. It is of the highest purity, of the greatest brightness, and is without stain or blemish. It has no certain shape, but a shape uncertain and changing every moment. Of the most consummate beauty, it suffers no one to touch it; and if you persist too long or obstinately, it will do you injury, as I have observed it repeatedly to do in no trifling measure. If anything be by chance taken from it by persevering efforts, it is (strange to say) made nothing less thereby. Its custodier adds farther, that its virtues and powers are useful in a great variety of ways, and even--especially to kings--indispensably necessary; but these he declines to reveal without being first paid a large reward.” The author might have added of this stone that it was neither hard nor soft, and exhibited a variety of forms and colours, and had a singular trick of trembling and palpitating, and like an animal--although itself inanimate--consumed a large quantity of food every day for its nutrition or sustenance. Farther, that he had heard from men worthy of credit, that this stone had formerly fallen from heaven to earth; that it was the frequent cause of thunder and lightning, and was still occasionally engendered from the solar beams refracted through water.

Who would not admire so remarkable a stone, or believe that it acted with a force superior to the forces of the elements, that it participated in the nature of another body, and possessed an ethereal spirit? especially when he found that it responded in its proportions to the essence of the sun. But with Fernelius[349] for Œdipus, we find the whole enigma resolving itself into “Flame.”

In the same way, did I paint the blood under the garb of a fable, and gave it the title of the philosopher’s stone, and propose all its wonderful faculties and operations in enigmatical language, many would doubtless think a great deal of it; they would readily believe that it could act with powers superior to those of the elements, and they would not unwillingly allow it to be possessed of another and more divine body.

EXERCISE THE SEVENTY-SECOND.

Of the primigenial moisture.

We have now dignified the blood with the title of the innate heat; with like propriety, we believe, that the fluid which we have called the crystalline colliquament, from which the fœtus and its parts primarily and immediately arise, may be designated the radical and primigenial moisture. There is certainly nothing in the generation of animals to which this title can with better right be given.

We call this the radical moisture, because from it arises the first particle of the embryo, the blood, to wit; and all the other posthumous parts arise from it as from a root; and they are procreated and nourished, and grow and are preserved by the same matter.

We also call it primigenial, because it is first engendered in every animal organism, and is, as it were, the foundation of the rest; as may be seen in the egg, in which it presents itself after a brief period of incubation, as the first work of the inherent fecundity and reproductive power.

This fluid is also the most simple, pure, and unadulterated body, in which all the parts of the pullet are present potentially, though none of them are there actually. It appears that nature has conceded to it the same qualities which are usually ascribed to first matter common to all things, viz. that potentially it be capable of assuming all forms, but have itself no form in fact. So the crystalline humour of the eye, in order that it might be susceptible of all colours, is itself colourless; and in like manner are the media or organs of each of the senses destitute of all the other qualities of sensible things: the organs of smelling and hearing, and the air which ministers to them, are without smell and sound; the saliva of the tongue and mouth is also tasteless.

And it is upon this argument that they mainly rely who maintain the possibility of an incorporeal intellect, viz. because it is susceptible of all forms without matter; and as the hand is called the “instrument of instruments,” so is the intellect called “the form of forms,” being itself immaterial and wholly without form; it is, therefore, said to be possible or potential, but not passible.

This fluid, or one analogous to it, appears also to be the ultimate aliment from which Aristotle taught that the semen, or geniture, as he calls it, is produced.[350] I say the ultimate aliment, called dew by the Arabians, with which all the parts of the body are bathed and moistened. For in the same way as this dew, by ulterior condensation and adhesion, becomes alible gluten and cambium, whence the parts of the body are constituted, so, mutatis mutandis, in the commencement of generation and nutrition, from gluten liquefied and rendered thinner is formed the nutritious dew: from the white of the egg is produced the colliquament under discussion, the radical moisture and primigenial dew. The thing indeed is identical in either instance, if any credit be accorded to our observations; and in fact neither philosophers nor physicians deny that an animal is nourished by the same matter out of which it is formed, and is increased by that from which it was engendered. The nutritious dew, therefore, differs from the colliquament or primigenial moisture only in the relation of prior and posterior; the one is concocted and prepared by the parents, the other by the embryo itself, both juices, however, being the proximate and immediate aliment of animals; not indeed “first and second,” according to that dictum, “contraria ex contrariis,” but ultimate, as I have said, and as Aristotle himself admonishes us, according to that other dictum, “similia ex similibus augeri,” “like is necessarily increased by its like.” There is in either fluid a proximate force, in virtue of which, no obstacles intervening, it will pass spontaneously, or by the law of nature, into every part of the animal body.

Such being the state of the question, it is obvious that all controversy about the matter of animals and their nourishment may be settled without difficulty. For as some believe that the semen or matter emitted in intercourse is taken up from every part of the body, so do they derive from this the resemblance of the offspring to the parents. Aristotle has these words: “Against the opinion of the ancients, it may be said that as they avow the semen to be a derivative from all parts else, we believe the semen to be disposed of itself to form every part; and whilst they call it a colliquament, we are rather inclined to regard it as an excrement” (he had, however, said shortly before that he entitled excrement the remains of the nourishment, and colliquament that which is secreted from the growth by a preternatural resolution); “for that which arrives last, and is the excrement of what is final, is in all probability of the same nature; in the same way as painters have very commonly some remains of colours, which are identical with those they have applied upon their canvass; but anything that is consuming and melting away is corrupt and degenerate. Another argument that the seminal fluid is not a colliquament, but an excrement, is this: that animals of larger growth are less prolific, smaller creatures more fruitful. Now there must be a larger quantity of colliquament in larger than in smaller animals, but less excrement; for as there must be a large consumption of nourishment in a large body, so must there be a small production of excrement. Farther, there is no place provided by nature for receiving and storing colliquament; it flows off by the way that is most open to it; but there are receptacles for all the natural excrements--the bowels for the dry excrements, the bladder for the moist; the stomach for matters useful; the genital organs, the uterus, the mammæ for seminal matter--in which several places they collect and run together.” After this he goes on by a variety of arguments to prove that the seminal matter from which the fœtus is formed is the same as that which is prepared for the nutrition of the parts at large. As if, should one require some pigment from a painter, he certainly would not go to scrape off what he had already laid on his canvass, but would supply the demand from his store, or from what he had over from his work, which was still of the same nature as that which he might have taken away from his picture. So and in like manner the excrement of the ultimate nutriment, or the remainder of the gluten and dew, is carried to the genital organs and there deposited; and this view is most accordant with the production of eggs by the hen.

The medical writers, too, who hold all the parts to be originally formed from the spermatic fluid, and consequently speak of these under the name of spermatic parts, say that the semen is formed from the ultimate nourishment, which with Aristotle they believe to be the blood, being produced by the virtue of the genital organs, and constituting the “matter” of the fœtus. Now it is obvious enough that the egg is produced by the mother and her ultimate nutriment, the nutritious dew, to wit. That clear part of the egg, therefore, that primigenial, or rather antegenial colliquament, is more truly to be reputed the semen of the cock, although it is not projected in the act of intercourse, but is prepared before intercourse, or is gathered together after this, as happens in many animals, and as will perhaps be stated more at length by and by, because the geniture of the male, according to Aristotle, coagulates.

When I see, therefore, all the parts formed and increasing from this one moisture, as “matter,” and from a primitive root, and the reasons already given combine in persuading us that this ought to be so, I can scarcely refrain from taunting and pushing to extremity the followers of Empedocles and Hippocrates, who believed all similar bodies to be engendered as mixtures by association of the four contrary elements, and to become corrupted by their disjunction; nor should I less spare Democritus and the Epicurean school that succeeded him, who compose all things of congregations of atoms of diverse figure. Because it was an error of theirs in former times, as it is a vulgar error at the present day, to believe that all similar bodies are engendered from diverse or heterogeneous matters. For on this footing, nothing even to the lynx’s eye would be similar, one, the same, and continuous; the unity would be apparent only, a kind of congeries or heap--a congregation or collection of extremely small bodies; nor would generation differ in any respect from a [mechanical] aggregation and arrangement of particles.

But neither in the production of animals, nor in the generation of any other “similar” body (whether it were of animal parts, or of plants, stones, minerals, &c.), have I ever been able to observe any congregation of such a kind, or any divers miscibles pre-existing for union in the work of reproduction. For neither, in so far at least as I have had power to perceive, or as reason will carry me, have I ever been able to trace any “similar” parts, such as membranes, flesh, fibres, cartilage, bone, &c., produced in such order, or as coexistent, that from these, as the elements of animal bodies, conjoined organs or limbs, and finally, the entire animal, should be compounded. But, as has been already said, the first rudiment of the body is a mere homogeneous and pulpy jelly, not unlike a concrete mass of spermatic fluid; and from this, under the law of generation, altered, and at the same time split or multifariously divided, as by a divine fiat, from an inorganic an organic mass results; this is made bone, this muscle or nerve, this a receptacle for excrementitious matter, &c.; from a similar a dissimilar is produced; out of one thing of the same nature several of diverse and contrary natures; and all this by no transposition or local movement, as a congregation of similar particles, or a separation of heterogeneous particles is effected under the influence of heat, but rather by the segregation of homogeneous than the union of heterogeneous particles.

And I believe that the same thing takes place in all generation, so that similar bodies have no mixed elements prior to themselves, but rather exist before their elements (these, according to Empedocles and Aristotle, being fire, air, earth, and water; according to chemists, salt, sulphur, and mercury; according to Democritus, certain atoms), as being naturally more perfect than these. There are, I say, both mixed and compound bodies prior to any of the so called elements, into which they are resolved, or in which they end. They are resolved, namely, into these elements according to reason rather than in fact. The so-called elements, therefore, are not prior to those things that are engendered, or that originate, but are posterior rather--they are relics or remainders rather than principles. Neither Aristotle himself nor any one else has ever demonstrated the separate existence of the elements in the nature of things, or that they were the principles of “similar” bodies.

The philosopher,[351] indeed, when he proceeds to prove that there are elements, still seems uncertain whether the conclusion ought to be that they exist in esse, or only in posse; he is of opinion that in natural things they are present in power rather than in action; and therefore does he assert, from the division, separation, and solution of things, that there are elements. It is, however, an argument of no great cogency to say that natural bodies are primarily produced, or composed of those things into which they are ultimately resolved; for upon this principle some things would come out composed, of glass, ashes, and smoke, into which we see them finally reduced by fire; and as artificial distillation clearly shows that a great variety of vapours and waters of different species can be drawn from so many different bodies, the number of elements would have to be increased to infinity. Nor has any one among the philosophers said that the bodies which, dissolved by art, are held pure and indivisible in their species, are elements of greater simplicity than the air, water, and earth, which we perceive by our senses, which we are familiar with through our eyes.

Nor, to conclude, do we see aught in the shape of miscible matter naturally engendered from fire; and it is perhaps impossible that it should be so, since fire, like that which is alive, is in a perpetual state of fluxion, and seeks for food by which it may be nourished and kept in being; in conformity with the words of Aristotle,[352] that “Fire is only nourished, and is especially remarkable in this.” But what is nourished cannot itself be mingled with its nutriment. Whence it follows that it is impossible fire should be miscible. For mixture, according to Aristotle, is the union of altered miscibles, in which one thing is not transformed into another, but two things, severally active and passive, into a third thing. Generation, however, especially generation by metamorphosis, is the distribution of one similar thing having undergone change into several others. Nor are mixed similar bodies said to be generated from the elements, but to be constituted by them in some certain way, solvent forces residing in them at the same time.

These considerations, however, properly belong to the section of Physiology, which treats of the elements and temperaments, where it will be our business to speak of them more at large.

ON PARTURITION.

On generation follows parturition, that process, viz. by which the fœtus comes into the world and breathes the external air. I have, therefore, thought it well worth while, and within the scope of my design, to treat briefly of this subject. With Fabricius, then, I shall consider the causes, the manner, and the seasons of this process, as well as the circumstances which both precede and follow it. The circumstances which occur immediately previous to birth, and which, in women especially, indicate that the act of parturition is not far distant, are, on the one hand, such a preparation and arrangement on the part of the mother as may enable her to get rid of her offspring; and on the other, such a disposition of the fœtus as may best facilitate its expulsion.

With respect to the latter, viz. the position of the fœtus, Fabricius says,[353] “that it is disposed in a globular form and bent upon itself, in order that its extremities and prominent points generally may not injure the uterus and the containing membranes; another reason being that it may be packed in as small a space as possible.” For my own part, I cannot think that these are the reasons why the limbs of the fœtus are always kept in the same position. Swimming and moving about, as it does, in water, it extends itself in every direction, and so turns and twists itself that occasionally it becomes entangled in a marvellous manner in its own navel-string. The truth is, that all animals, whilst they are at rest or asleep, fold up their limbs in such a way as to form an oval or globular figure: so in like manner embryos, passing as they do the greater part of their time in sleep, dispose their limbs in the position in which they are formed, as being most natural and best adapted for their state of rest. So too the infant in utero is generally found disposed after this manner: the knees are drawn up towards the abdomen, the legs flexed, the feet crossed, and the hands directed to the head, one of them usually resting on the temples or ears, the other on the chin, in which situation white spots are discernible on the skin as the result of friction; the spine, moreover, is curved into a circle, and the neck being bowed, the head falls upon the knees. In such a position is the embryo usually found, as that which we naturally take in sleep; the head being situated superiorly, and the face usually turned towards the back of the mother. A short time, however, before birth the head is bent downwards towards the orifice of the uterus, and the fœtus, as it were, in search of an outlet, dives to the bottom. Thus Aristotle:[354] “All animals naturally come forth with the head foremost; but cross and foot presentations are unnatural.” This, however, does not hold universally; but as the position in utero varies, so too does the mode of exit; this may be observed in the case of dogs, swine, and other multiparous animals. The human fœtus even has not always the same position; and this is well known to pregnant women, who feel its movements in very different parts of the uterus, sometimes in the upper part, sometimes in the lower, or on either side.

In like manner the uterus, when the term of gestation is completed, descends lower (in the pelvis), the whole organ becomes softer, and its orifice patent. The “waters” also, as they are vulgarly called, “gather;” that is, a portion of the chorion, in which the watery matter is contained, gets in front of the fœtus, and falls from the uterus into the vagina; at the same time the neighbouring parts become relaxed and dilatable; in addition to which the cartilaginous attachments of the pelvic bones so lose their rigidity that the bones themselves yield readily to the passage of the fœtus, and thus greatly increase the area of the hypogastric region. When all these circumstances concur, it is quite clear that delivery is not far distant. Nature, in her provident care, contrives this dilatation of the parts in order that the fœtus may come into the world like the ripe fruit of a tree; just as she fills the breasts of the mother with milk that the being who is soon to enjoy an independent existence may have whereon to subsist. These, then, are the circumstances which immediately precede birth; and thus it happens that the presence of milk has especially been regarded as a sign of approaching delivery--milk, I mean, of a character suitable for the sustenance of the offspring; and this, according to Aristotle,[355] is only visible at the period of birth; it is therefore never observed before the seventh month of pregnancy.

Fabricius[356] maintains that on the subject of parturition there were two special heads of inquiry, viz. the time at which and the manner in which the process took place. Under the first of these heads he considers the term of utero-gestation; under the second, the way in which the fœtus comes into the world.

Aristotle[357] thought that the term of utero-gestation varied much. “There is,” he says, “a certain definite term to each animal, determined in the majority of cases by the animal’s duration of life; for it follows of necessity that a longer period is required for the production of the longer-lived animals.” He attributes, however, the chief cause to the size of the animal; “for it is scarcely possible,” he continues, “that the vast frames of animals or of aught else can be brought to perfection in a short period of time. Hence it is that in the case of mares and animals of cognate species, though their duration of life is small, their term of utero-gestation is considerable; and thus the elephant carries its young for the space of two years, the reason being its enormous size, for each animal has a definite magnitude, beyond which it cannot pass.” I would add, that the material of which each is formed has also its fixed limit in point of quantity. He says, moreover, “There is good reason why animals should have the periods of gestation, generation, and duration of life in certain cycles--I mean by cycle, a day, night, month, and year, and the time which is described by these; also the motions of the moon--for these are the common origin of generation to all. For it is in accordance with reason that the cycles of inferior things should follow those of the higher.” Nature, then, has decreed that the birth and death of animals should have their period and limit after this manner.

Just as the birth of animals depends on the course of the sun and moon, so have they various seasons for copulation and different terms of utero-gestation, these last being longer or shorter according to circumstances. “In the human species alone,” says the philosopher in the same part of his works, “is the period of utero-gestation subject to great irregularity. In other animals there is one fixed time, but in man several; for the human fœtus is expelled both in the seventh and tenth months, and at any period of pregnancy between these; moreover, when the birth takes place in the eighth month, it is possible for the infant to live.” In the majority of animals there is a distinct season for bringing forth their young; this is generally found to be in the spring, when the sun returns, but in many species it is in the summer, and in some in the autumn, as is the case with the cartilaginous fishes. Hence it is that animals, as the time of labour approaches, seek their accustomed haunts, and provide a safe and comfortable shelter where they may bring forth and rear their young. Hence, too, the title “bird-winds,” applied to those gales which prevail toward the beginning of spring, the word owing its origin to the fact of certain birds at that period of the year availing themselves of these winds to accomplish their migrations. In like manner stated seasons are observed by those fishes which congregate in myriads in certain places for the purpose of rearing their young. Moreover, in the spring, as soon as caterpillars fall under our notice (their ova, as may be observed by the way, like to invisible atoms, being for the most part carried by the winds, and not owing their origin, as commonly supposed, to spontaneous generation, or to be looked upon as the result of putrefaction), straightway the trees put forth their buds, soon to be devoured by these creatures; and these in their turn fall victims to birds innumerable, and are carried to the nest as food for the young brood. So constantly does this hold, that whenever strange species of caterpillars fall under notice, at the same time we are sure to see some rare and foreign birds, as if the latter had chased the former from some remote corner of the earth. Now in both of these classes of creatures the time for bringing forth their young is the same. Physicians, too, when these phenomena occur, are enabled to predict the approach of sundry strange diseases. Bees bring forth in the month of May, when honey abounds; wasps in the summer, when the fruit is ripe; and this is analogous to what takes place in viviparous animals, who produce their young at the period when their milk is best adapted for their offspring. But other animals of the non-migratory classes, in the same way, at stated seasons seek a place to deposit their young as they do a store of food. And thus it results that the countryman is able to decide what are the proper seasons for ploughing, sowing, and getting in his harvest, forming his opinion chiefly from the approach of flocks of birds, and especially of the seminivora. There are, however, some animals in whom there is no fixed time for production, and this is chiefly the case with those which are called domestic, and live with the human species. These both copulate and produce their young at uncertain seasons, and the reason probably is to be sought for in the larger quantity of food they consume, and the consequent inordinate salacity. But in these, as in the human species, the process of parturition is often difficult and dangerous.

There are other animals also on whom the course of the moon has influence, and which consequently copulate and bring forth their young at certain periods of the year--rabbits, mice, and the human female may be instanced. “For the moon,” observes Plutarch,[358] “when half full, is represented as greatly efficacious in shortening the pains of labour, and this she effects by moderating and relaxing the humours--hence, I think, those surnames of Diana are derived, Locheia, i. e. the tutelar deity of childbirth, and Eilytheia, otherwise Lucina; for Diana and the moon are synonymous.”

“In all other animals,” says Pliny,[359] “there are stated seasons and periods for production and utero-gestation; in man alone are they undetermined.” And this is, to a great extent, true; for in his case, although nature has laid down for the most part certain boundaries, yet there is sometimes a vast difference in individuals, and instances are recorded of women bringing forth viable children, some in the seventh, and others in the fourteenth month. Further, although Aristotle[360] asserts “that the majority of eight months’ children in Greece die,” he still admits “that they survive in Egypt and in some other countries, where the women have easy labours;” and although he says “that children born before the seventh month can under no circumstances survive, and that the seventh month is the first in which anything like maturity exists, and that the feebleness of children born even then is such as to make it necessary to wrap them in wool,” he still allows “that these are viable.” Franciscus Valesius tells us of a girl in his time, who, although a five months’ child, had arrived at the age of twelve years. Adrianus Spigelius[361] also records the case of a certain courier, “who proved to the satisfaction of all, on the public testimony of the city of Middleburgh, that he was born at the commencement of the sixth month, and that his frame was so slight and fragile that his mother found it necessary to wrap him up in cotton until such times as he was able to bear the ordinary dress of infants.” Avicenna[362] also states that a sixth months’ child is very capable of surviving. In like manner it is proved, both by ancient and modern authorities, that children may live who are born after the completion of the eleventh month. “We are told,” says Pliny,[363] “by Massurius, that when his inheritance was claimed by the next heir, Lucius Papyrius the prætor gave the decision against the claimant, although, by his mother’s account, Massurius was a thirteen months’ child--the ground of the judgment being that the term of utero-gestation had not been as yet accurately determined. There was indeed, not so long since, a woman in our own country who carried her child more than sixteen months, during ten of which she distinctly felt the movements of the fœtus, as indeed did others, and at last brought forth a living infant. These are rare contingencies, I will allow; and therefore it is hardly fair of Spigelius to blame Ulpianus the lawyer because he regarded as legitimate no child born after the completion of the tenth month. Both laws and precepts of art, we must remember, have reference to the general rules of vital processes. Besides, it is impossible to deny that many women, either for purposes of gain or from fear of punishment, have simulated pregnancy, and not hesitated to swear to the truth of their assertion:--others again have frequently been deceived, and fancied themselves pregnant, whilst the uterus has contained no product of conception. On this point Aristotle’s[364] words may be quoted: “The exact period at which conception takes place in the case of those born after the eleventh month can scarcely be ascertained. Women themselves do not know the time at which they conceive; for the uterus is often affected by flatulent disorders, and if under these circumstances conception takes place, women imagine this flatulency to mark the period of conception, because they have recognized certain symptoms which accompany actual conception.”

In the case of other women in whom the fœtus has died in the third or fourth month, then putrefied, and come away in the form of fetid lochial discharges, we have known superfœtation to take place; and yet these same women have persisted that they have brought forth their children after the completion of the fourteenth month. “It happens sometimes,” says Aristotle,[365] “that an abortion takes place, and ten or twelve products of superfœtation come away. But if the (second) conception takes place soon after (the first), the woman goes to the full time with the second, and brings forth both as twins. This was said to have been the case in the fable of Iphicles and Hercules. And it is a subject which admits of proof; for it is known of a woman that she brought forth one child resembling her husband, and another like a man with whom she had had adulterous intercourse. Another woman became pregnant of twins, and conceived another by superfœtation. Her labour came on, and she brought forth the twins well formed and at their proper time, whilst the third child was at the fifth month, and so died immediately.”

A certain maid-servant being gotten with child by her master, to conceal her disgrace, fled to London in the month of September; here she was delivered, and returned home with her health restored. In December, however, the birth of another child, conceived by superfœtation, proclaimed to the world the fault she had committed. “It happened to another woman,” adds the philosopher, “to be delivered of a seven months’ child, and afterwards of twins at the full term, the single child dying, the twins surviving. Other women also, having become pregnant of twins, have miscarried of one, and borne the other to the full term.” It is very easy to understand how, if the earlier or later product of superfœtation come away after three or four months have elapsed, that mistakes may be made in calculating the subsequent months, especially by credulous and ignorant women. We have sometimes observed, both in women and other animals, the product of conception perish, and come away gradually in the form of a thin fluid, somewhat resembling fluor albus. Not long since a woman in London, after an abortion of this kind, conceived anew, and brought forth a child at the proper period. Subsequently, however, after a lapse of some months, as she was engaged in her ordinary duties, without any pain or uneasiness, there came away piecemeal some dark bones belonging to the fœtus of which she had formerly miscarried. I was able to recognize in some of the fragments portions of the spine, femur, and other bones.

I am acquainted with a young woman, the daughter of a physician with whom I am very intimate, who experienced in her own person all the usual symptoms of pregnancy; after the fourteenth week, being healthy and sprightly, she felt the movements of the child within the uterus, calculated the time at which she expected her delivery, and when she thought, from further indications, that this was at hand, prepared the bed, cradle, and all other matters ready for the event. But all was in vain. Lucina refused to answer her prayers; the motions of the fœtus ceased; and by degrees, without inconvenience, as the abdomen had increased so it diminished; she remained, however, barren ever after. I am acquainted also with a noble lady who had borne more than ten children, and in whom the catamenia never disappeared except as the result of impregnation. Afterwards, however, being married to a second husband, she considered herself pregnant, forming her judgment not only from the symptoms on which she usually relied, but also from the movements of the child, which were frequently felt both by herself and her sister, who occupied the same bed with her. No arguments of mine could divest her of this belief. The symptoms depended on flatulence and fat. Hence the best ascertained signs of pregnancy have sometimes deceived not only ignorant women, but experienced midwives, and even skilful and accurate physicians--so that as mistakes are liable to arise, not only from deception on the part of the women themselves, but also from the erroneous tokens of pregnancy, I should say that no rule is to be rashly laid down with respect to births taking place before the seventh or after the fourteenth month.

Unquestionably the ordinary term of utero-gestation is that which we believe was kept in the womb of his mother by our Saviour Christ, of men the most perfect; counting, viz. from the festival of the Annunciation, in the month of March, to the day of the blessed Nativity, which we celebrate in December. Prudent matrons, calculating after this rule, as long as they note the day of the month in which the catamenia usually appear, are rarely out of their reckoning; but after ten lunar months have elapsed, fall in labour, and reap the fruit of their womb the very day on which the catamenia would have appeared, had impregnation not taken place.

As regards the causes of labour, Fabricius, besides that of Galen[366] (who held “that the fœtus was retained in utero until it was sufficiently grown and nourished to take food by the mouth,” according to which theory weakly children ought to remain in utero longer than others, which they do not), gives another and a better reason, viz. “the necessity the fœtus feels for more perfectly cooling itself by respiration, since the child breathes immediately on birth, but does not take food by the mouth. This is not only the case,” he continues, “in man and quadrupeds, but has been particularly observed in birds: these, small as they are, and furnished as yet with but tender bills, peck through the egg-shell at the point where they have need of respiration; and they do this rather through want of breath than of food, since the instant they quit the shell the function of respiration begins, whilst they remain without eating for two days, or longer.” This point, however, whether the object of respiration be really to “cool” the animal, shall be discussed elsewhere at greater length.

In the mean time I would propose this question to the learned--How does it happen that the fœtus continues in its mother’s womb after the seventh month? seeing that when expelled after this epoch, not only does it breathe, but without respiration cannot survive one little hour; whilst, as I before stated, if it remain in utero, it lives in health and vigour more than two months longer without the aid of respiration at all. To state my meaning more plainly--how is it that if the fœtus is expelled with the membranes unbroken, it can survive some hours without risk of suffocation; whilst the same fœtus, removed from its membranes, if air has once entered the lungs, cannot afterwards live a moment without it, but dies instantly? Surely this cannot be from want of “cooling,” for in difficult labours it often happens that the fœtus is retained in the passages many hours without the possibility of breathing, yet is found to be alive; when, however, it is once born and has breathed, if you deprive it of air it dies at once. In like manner children have been removed alive from the uterus by the Cæsarean section many hours after the death of the mother; buried as they are within the membranes, they have no need of air; but as soon as they have once breathed, although they be returned immediately within the membranes, they perish if deprived of it. If any one will carefully attend to these circumstances, and consider a little more closely the nature of air, he will, I think, allow that air is given neither for the “cooling” nor the nutrition of animals; for it is an established fact, that if the fœtus has once respired, it may be more quickly suffocated than if it had been entirely excluded from the air: it is as if heat were rather enkindled within the fœtus than repressed by the influence of the air.

Thus much, by the way, on the subject of respiration; hereafter, perhaps, I may treat of it at greater length. As the arguments on either side are very equally balanced, it is a question of the greatest difficulty.

To return to parturition. Besides the reasons alluded to above, viz. “the necessity for respiration and the want of nourishment,” Fabricius gives another; he says, “that the weight of the fœtus becomes so great as to exert considerable pressure, and the bulk such that the uterus is unable to retain it, added to which the quantity of excrementitious matter is so much increased that it cannot be contained by the membranes.”[367]

Now it has been shown above that the uterine humours are not excrementitious. Nor do the weight and bulk of the fœtus help us to a more probable explanation; for the fœtus suspended in water weighs but slightly on the placenta or uterus; besides which some nine months’ children are very small, much less in fact than many fœtuses of eight months, nevertheless they do not abide longer in the womb. And as to weight, any twins of eight months are far heavier than a single nine months’ child; yet they are not expelled before nine months are completed. Nor do we find a better reason in “want of nutriment;” twins, and even more children, are abundantly supplied with support up to the full term; and the milk which after delivery is sufficient for the nourishment of the child, could equally well, if transferred to the uterus, nourish the fœtus there.

I should rather attribute the birth of the child to the following reason--that the juices within the amnion, hitherto admirably adapted for nutriment, at that particular period either fail or become contaminated by excrementitious matter. I have touched on this subject before. The variation in the term of utero-gestation, occurring as it does chiefly in the human species, I believe to depend on the habits of life, feebleness of body, and on the various affections of the mind. And thus in the case of domesticated animals, owing to their indolence and overfeeding, the seasons both of copulation and production are less fixed and certain than in the wilder tribes. So women in robust health usually experience easy and rapid labours; the contrary holding good in those whose constitutions are shattered by disease. For the same thing befalls them that happens to plants, the seeds and fruits of which come later and less frequently to perfection in cold climates than in those where the soil is good and the sun powerful. Thus oranges in this country usually remain on the tree two years before they arrive at maturity; and figs, which in Italy ripen two or three times annually, scarcely come to perfection in our climate:--the same thing happens to the fruit of the womb; it depends on the abundance or deficiency of nutriment, on the strength or weakness of body, and on the right or wrong ordering of life with reference to what physicians call the “non-naturals,” whether the child arrives sooner or later at maturity, i. e. is born.

Fabricius describes the manner of parturition as follows: “The uterus having been so enlarged by the bulk of the fœtus that it will admit of no further distension without risk, and thus excited to expulsion, is drawn into itself by the action of the transverse fibres, and diminishes its cavity. Thus whilst previously neither the excrementitious matters from their quantity, nor the fœtus from its bulk, could be contained within it, the uterus, contracted and compressed as it is now, becomes still less able to retain them. Wherefore, first of all, the membranes, as being the weaker parts, and suffering most pressure, are ruptured, and give exit to the waters, which are of a very fluid consistence, for the purpose of lubricating the passages. Then follows the fœtus, which tends towards, and, as it were, assaults the uterine aperture, not only by the force of its own gravity as no longer floating in water, but compressed and propelled by the action of the uterus: the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm also assist mightily in the entire process.”

Now in these words Fabricius rather describes the process of defæcation or an abortion than a genuine and natural birth. For although in women, as a general rule, the membranes are ruptured before the escape of the fœtus, it is not universally so; nor does it hold in the case of other animals which bring forth their young enveloped in their membranes. This can be observed in the bitch, ewe, mare, and others, and more particularly in the viper, which conceives an ovum of an uniform colour and soft shell (resembling in fact the product of conception in the woman); this is retained until the fœtus is completely formed; it is then expelled entire, and, according to Aristotle,[368] is broken through by the young animal on the third day. It sometimes happens, however, that kittens, whilst yet in utero, gnaw through the membranes, and so come into the world uninvolved.

And so also, according to the observation of experienced midwives, women have occasionally expelled the child with the membranes unbroken. And this kind of birth, in which the fœtus is born enveloped in its coverings, appears to me by far the most natural; it is like the ripe fruit which drops from the tree without scattering its seed before the appointed time. But where it is otherwise, and the placenta, subsequently to birth, adheres to the uterus, there is great difficulty in detaching it, grave symptoms arise, fetid discharges, and sometimes gangrene occur, and the mother is brought into imminent peril.

Since then the process of parturition, as described by Fabricius, does not apply to all animals, but to women alone, and this not universally, but only where the labour is premature, and, as it were, forced, we must regard it not so much as a description of a natural as of a preternatural and hurried delivery, in fact, of an abortion.

In natural and genuine labour two things are required, which mutually bear upon and assist each other: these are, the mother which produces, and the child to be produced; and unless both are ready to play their part, the labour will hardly terminate favorably, requiring as it does the proper maturity of both. For if, on the one hand, the fœtus, from restlessness and over-desire to make its way out, does violence to the uterus, and thus anticipates the mother; or if, on the contrary, the mother, owing to feebleness of the uterus, or any other circumstance necessitating expulsion, is beforehand with the fœtus, this is to be looked upon rather as the result of disease than as a natural and critical birth. The same may be said of those cases where parts only of the product of conception escape, whilst others remain; for instance, if the fœtus itself is disposed to come away when the placenta is not yet separated from the uterus, or, on the other hand, if the placenta is separated when the fœtus is not rightly placed, or the uterus is not sufficiently relaxed to allow of its passage. Hence it is that midwives are so much to blame, especially the younger and more meddlesome ones, who make a marvellous pother when they hear the woman cry out with her pains and implore assistance, daubing their hands with oil, and distending the passages, so as not to appear ignorant in their art--giving besides medicines to excite the expulsive powers, and when they would hurry the labour, retarding it and making it unnatural, by leaving behind portions of the membranes, or even of the placenta itself, besides exposing the wretched woman to the air, wearying her out on the labour-stool, and making her, in fact, run great risks of her life. In truth, it is far better with the poor, and those who become pregnant by mischance, and are secretly delivered without the aid of a midwife; for the longer the birth is retarded the more safely and easily is the process completed.

Of unnatural labours, therefore, there are chiefly two kinds: either the fœtus is born before the proper time (and this constitutes an abortion), or else subsequently to it, when a difficult or tedious labour is the result, either from the due time and order not being preserved, or from the presence of dangerous symptoms; these arise either from failure of the expelling powers on the part of the mother, or from sluggishness on the part of the fœtus in making its way out; it is when both perform their proper parts that a safe and genuine labour results.

Fabricius ascribes the business of expelling the offspring to the uterus; and he adds, “the abdominal muscles and the diaphragm assist in the business.” It seems to me, however, on deep investigation, that the throes of childbirth, just as sneezing, proceed from the motion and agitation of the whole body. I am acquainted with a young woman who during labour fell into so profound a state of coma that no remedies had power to rouse her, nor was she in fact able to swallow. When called to her, finding that injections and other ordinary remedies had been employed in vain, I dipped a feather in a powerful sternutatory, and passed it up the nostrils. Although the stupor was so profound that she could not sneeze, or be roused in any way, the effect was to excite convulsions throughout the body, beginning at the shoulders, and gradually descending to the lower extremities. As often as I employed the stimulus the labour advanced, until at last a strong and healthy child was born, without the consciousness of the mother, who still remained in a state of coma.

We can observe the manner of labour-pains in other animals, as the bitch, sheep, and larger cattle, and ascertain that they do not depend on the action of the uterus and abdomen only, but on the efforts of the whole body.

The degree in which the offspring contributes to accelerate and facilitate birth is made clear from observations on oviparous animals; in these it is ascertained that the shell is broken through by the fœtus and not by the mother. Hence it is probable that in viviparous animals also the greater part of delivery is due to the fœtus--to its efforts, I mean, not to its gravity, as Fabricius would have it. For what can gravity do in the case of quadrupeds standing or sitting, or in the woman when lying down? Nor are the efforts of the fœtus to get out, the result, as he believes, of its own bulk or of that of the waters; the waters, it is true, when the fœtus is dead and decomposed, by their putrid and acrimonious nature, stimulate the uterus to expel its contents; but it is the fœtus itself which, with its head downwards, attacks the portals of the womb, opens them by its own energies, and thus struggles into day. Wherefore a birth of this kind is held the more speedy and fortunate; “it is contrary to nature,” says Pliny,[369] “for a child to be born with the feet foremost; hence those so born were called Agrippæ, i. e. born with difficulty”--(ægre parti), for in such the labour is tedious and painful. Notwithstanding this, in cases of abortion, or where the fœtus is dead, or, in fact, when any difficulty arises in the delivery so as to require manual aid, it is better that the feet should come first; they act as a wedge on the narrow uterine passages. Hence, when we chiefly depend upon the fœtus, as being lively and active, to accomplish delivery, we must do our best that the head escape first; but if the business is to be done by the uterus, it is advisable that the feet come foremost.

We are able to observe in how great a degree the fœtus contributes to delivery, not only in birds, which, as I have said above, break through the shell by their own powers, but also in many other animals. All kinds of flies and butterflies pierce the little membrane in which they lie concealed as “aureliæ;” the silkworm also, at its appointed time, softens by moistening, and then eats through the silken bag which it had spun round itself for protection, and makes its way out without any foreign aid. In the same manner wasps, hornets, all insects in fact, and fishes of every kind, are born by their own will and powers. This can be best seen in the skate, fork-fish, lamprey, and the cartilaginous fishes generally. These conceive a perfect two-coloured egg, made up, that is, of albumen and yelk, and contained in a strong quadrangular shell; from this, still retained within the uterus, the young fish is formed: it then breaks through the shell, and makes its way out. In an exactly similar manner the young viper eats through the egg-shell, sometimes whilst it remains in utero, sometimes when within the passages, at others two or three days after birth. Hence arose the fable of the young viper eating through the womb of its mother, and so avenging its father’s death; it does, in fact, nothing but what the young of every animal does, breaking though the membranes which envelope it, either in the delivery itself, or a short time subsequently to that event.

We learn moreover from positive observations how much the fœtus contributes to its own birth. A woman in my own neighbourhood, and I speak as having knowledge of the circumstance, died one evening, and the body was left by itself in a room; the next morning an infant was found between the thighs of the mother, having evidently forced its way out by its own efforts. Gregorius Nymmanus has collected several instances of a similar kind from trustworthy authors.

I am further acquainted with a woman who had the whole length of the vagina so torn and injured in a difficult labour, that subsequently, after she had again become pregnant, not only did the parts in the neighbourhood of the nymphæ, but the whole cavity of the vagina as far as the orifice of the uterus, become adherent; this went to such an extent that coition became impossible, nor could a probe be passed up, nor was there any passage left for the ordinary discharges. When her labour came on her sufferings were so dreadful that all hope of delivery was abandoned. She therefore gave up the keys to her husband, arranged her affairs, and took leave of her friends who were present. On a sudden, however, by the violent efforts of the fœtus the whole space was burst through, and a vigorous infant born; thus was the fœtus the salvation both of itself and its mother, besides opening the way for subsequent children. By the exhibition of proper remedies the mother recovered her former good state of health.

The following instance is even more remarkable. A white mare of great beauty had been presented to her Serene Highness the Queen, and in order that its symmetry and usefulness might not be impaired by foal-bearing, the grooms, as is the custom, had infibulated the animal with iron rings. This mare (by what chance I know not, nor could the grooms inform me) was got with foal; and at length, when no one suspected anything of the kind, she foaled in the night, and a living foal was found the next morning by the mother’s side. When I heard of the circumstance I went immediately to the place, and found the sides of the vulva still fastened together by the rings, but the whole pudendum on the left side so thrust and torn away from the pelvis by the almost incredible efforts of the fœtus, that a gap sufficiently wide was made to admit of its escape. Such is the force and vigour of a full-grown and healthy fœtus.

But, on the contrary, if the fœtus is diseased or feeble, or is bom before the full term, it must be considered more an abortion than a regular birth, the fœtus being expelled rather than born; and thus for some days after birth it neither properly takes the breast nor gets rid of its excretions.

And yet the following example will show that the uterus also contributes towards delivery. A poor washerwoman had long suffered from procidentia uteri to such an extent that a tumour hung between the thighs as large as the fist. As no remedies had been applied, the prolapsed part became so rough and wrinkled as to take on the appearance of the scrotum, and in this state she suffered less than at the commencement of her illness. When consulted on her case, I ordered her to keep her bed for several days, to employ fomentations and ointments, and after the uterus was returned, to keep it in its place by means of pessaries and bandages, until by the use of strengthening applications it should be fixed firmly in its place. This plan was followed by some success; but she soon suffered a relapse, when compelled by her circumstances to follow her usual occupations, and continue long in the erect position. She bore, however, her inconvenience with patience, the uterus at times protruding, at others not doing so. At night she could usually reduce it, and it remained for some time in its proper place. After the lapse of a few days she returned, and complained that the uterus was so swelled from the use, as she thought, of the remedies, and especially of the fomentations, that it could not any longer be retained. By using some applications she was enabled to accomplish the reduction; but the cure was only temporary, for as soon as she stood up, and followed her ordinary occupations, the uterus immediately gave her much inconvenience by its weight, and at length entirely prolapsed. And now it hung down to the middle of the thigh, like the scrotum of a bull, to such an extent that I suspected not only the vagina but also the uterus to be inverted, or that there was some kind of uterine hernia. At length the tumour exceeded in magnitude a man’s head, acquired a resisting character, and hung down as low as the knees; it also gave her much pain, and prevented her walking except in the prone position; added to which it discharged a sanious fluid from its inferior part, as if some portion had ulcerated. On ocular inspection (for I did not employ the touch) I feared that cancer or carcinoma might result, and so thought of the ligature or excision; in the mean time I advised the employment of soothing fomentations to ease the pain. The following night, however, a fœtus of a span long, perfectly formed, but dead, was expelled from the tumour, and was brought to me the next day. I took out the intestines, and kept it in cold water without decomposition for many months, showing it to my friends as an extraordinary object of curiosity. The proper skin in this fœtus was not yet formed, but in its place there was a pellicle, which could be stripped off entire, like that on a baked apple; underneath all the muscles of the body could be distinctly seen, the fœtus being very lean. I shall describe at another opportunity what I discovered in this fœtus on dissection. I have mentioned the case on this occasion to show that it was the uterus alone which excited the abortion, and expelled the fœtus by its own efforts.

Fabricius[370] suggests two circumstances as especially worthy of admiration in and after birth: first, the dilatation of the uterus at the time of birth; secondly, the way in which after birth it is restored to its usual small size. He wonders how the uterus can be so distended as to allow the fœtus to escape, and afterwards in so short a period return to its pristine state.

He says, “that with Galen[371] we can only wonder, but not understand,” how the neck of the uterus, a part so thick, hard, and closely sealed, as not to admit a probe, can suffer such distension at the time of deliver”. He gives,[372] however, the following reason: “that the unimpregnated uterus is of a thick and hard consistence, and so is its orifice, but when impregnated is yielding and soft, and in proportion as the term of delivery approaches, both the body of the uterus and its orifice become more and more yielding.” He believes this to arise “from the distension which the uterus undergoes, and that when this distension takes place, the compact and plaited, so to speak, body of the uterus is expanded and unfolded; thus what was before thick and hard becomes soft and yielding, and ready to admit of the passage of the fœtus.” He adds subsequently, “Some one may ask--if all this is correct, how is it that in pregnant animals the uterine aperture is so closed that it will not admit a probe? I answer, that this is so because the uterus, whilst it is being distended and undone, like a closely-folded piece of linen, begins to undergo these changes at its superior part; the lower portions then gradually widen, until the power of distension arrives at the aperture; this generally takes place at the period of birth. With reason then is the uterine orifice closely shut in the first months of pregnancy, whilst it is still hard and thick, but inclined to dilate in the latter ones. Thus much may be said about the unknown cause of Galen. Other circumstances may be mentioned as conducing to the dilatation of the orifice; for instance, the excretions of the fœtus, such as the sweat and urine; for although these are contained in their proper receptacles and membranes, yet some degree of moisture may be communicated to the uterine aperture, especially as it lies low, and always in the immediate neighbourhood of these humours; added to which, mucous and slimy matters are always found about the orifice.” But in my opinion this great man is wrong; for the neck of the uterus is not hard from being folded on itself, but in consequence of its own proper substance and cartilaginous nature; and the accidental causes which he gives can have but little weight towards furthering the dilatation. This, doubtless, like every other contrivance in the human body, is owing to the divine providence of Nature, which directs her workmanship to certain ends, actions, and uses. The structure, then, of the uterus is such, that immediately on conception it shuts up closely its cartilaginous aperture, for the purpose of retaining the seed; this part subsequently, at birth, and that the fœtus may escape, like fruit on the tree, comes to maturity and softens, and this not by any unfolding of its tissue, but by a change in its natural character. For a loosening and softening takes place even in the commissural attachments of bones, as in those between the haunches and the sacrum, the pubes, and the pieces of the coccyx. It is a truly wonderful thing that the little point of a sprouting germ, say of the almond or another fruit, should break the shell which a hammer can scarcely crush; or that the tender fibres of the ivy-root should penetrate the narrow chinks of the stone, and at length cause rents in mighty walls. But it does not appear so marvellous that the parts of the woman, when distended by labour, should recover their natural firmness, if we consider the state of the male organ in coition, and how soon it subsequently becomes soft and flaccid. A greater matter for wonder is it, and surpassing all these “foldings,” that the substance of the uterus, as the fœtus increases, not only is day by day enlarged and distended or unfolded, as it were, to take Fabricius’s notion, but that it should become more thick, fleshy, and strong. We may even, with Fabricius, marvel still more at the means by which the mass of the uterus, by the intervention of the ordinary lochial discharges, returns to its original size in so few days; for this is not the case with other tumours or abscesses; these require a longer period for dispersion, being made up of unnatural matters, and such as require digestion, a process opposed to the power of expulsion. Yet this is not more worthy of admiration than the other works of nature, for “all things are full of God,” and the Deity of nature is ever visibly present.

In the last place, it is object of great wonder to Fabricius how those vessels of the fœtus (meaning the oval opening out of the vena cava into the pulmonary vein, and the duct from the pulmonary artery into the aorta, on which subjects I have entered fully in my Essay on the Circulation of the Blood) immediately after birth begin to shrivel up and become obliterated. He is driven to that reason given by Aristotle,[373] and already cited by me, which is, that all parts are made for a certain function, and if the function ceases to be required that they themselves disappear. The eye sees, the ear hears, the brain perceives, the stomach digests, not because such characters and structures (naturally) belong to these organs; but they are endowed with such characters and structures to accomplish the functions appointed them by nature.

On grounds like these it would appear that the uterus holds the first place among the organs destined for generation; for the testicles are made to produce semen, the semen is for the purposes of intercourse, and coition itself, or the emission of the semen, is instituted by nature that the uterus may be fecundated and generation result.

I have said before that an egg is, as it were, the fruit of an animal, and a kind of external uterus. Now, on the other hand, we may regard the uterus as an egg remaining within. For as trees are gay with leaves, flowers, and fruit at stated periods, and oviparous animals at one time conceive and produce eggs, at another become effete, so that neither the “place” or the part that contained them can be found, so have viviparous animals their spring and autumn allotted them. At the season of fecundation the genital organs, especially in the female, undergo great changes, so much so that in birds, the ovary, which at other times is scarcely visible, now becomes turgid; and the belly of the fish, near about the time of spawning, far exceeds in bulk the rest of the body, owing to the enormous number of ova and the quantity of semen contained within it. In very many viviparous animals the genital organs, that is, the uterus and spermatic vessels, are not always found presenting the same mode and course of action and structure; but as they are capable or not of conception, so changes take place, and to such an extent that the organs can hardly be recognized as the same. In nature, just as there is nothing lacking, so is there nothing superfluous; and thus it happens that the organs of generation wither away and are lost when there is no longer any use for them.

At the period of coitus in the hare and mole, the testicles of the male become visible, and in the female the horns of the uterus appear. In truth, it is most marvellous to see what an enormous quantity of semen is contained in full-grown moles and mice at those times, whilst at others no semen can be seen, and the testicles are shrunk and retracted. So also when the reproductive faculty ceases in the female, the uterus is found with difficulty, and it is scarcely possible to distinguish the sexes.

The uterus, especially in the woman, varies extraordinarily as it is fecundated or not, both in constitution and in the results of that constitution--I mean in position, size, form, colour, thickness, hardness, and density. In the girl, before the age of puberty, the breasts are no larger than those of the boy, and the uterus is a small, white, membranous organ, destitute of vessels, and not larger than the top of the thumb, or a large bean. In like manner in old women, as the breasts are collapsed, so is the uterus shrunken, flaccid, withered, pale, and void of vessels and blood. I attribute the suppression of the catamenia in elderly women to this cause; in them the menstruous fluid either escapes as hemorrhoidal flux, or is prematurely stopped, to the injury of the health. For when the uterus becomes cold and almost lifeless, and all its vessels are obliterated, the superfluous blood boils up, and either falls back and stagnates, or else is diverted into the neighbouring veins. On the contrary, in those pale virgins who labour under chronic maladies, and in whom the uterus is small and the catamenia stagnate, “by coition,” says Aristotle,[374] “the excrementitious menstrual fluid is drawn downwards, for the heated uterus attracts the humours, and the passages are opened.” In this way their maladies are greatly lessened, seeing that want of action on the part of the uterus exposes the body to various ills. For the uterus is a most important organ, and brings the whole body to sympathize with it. No one of the least experience can be ignorant what grievous symptoms arise when the uterus either rises up or falls down, or is in any way put out of place, or is seized with spasm--how dreadful, then, are the mental aberrations, the delirium, the melancholy, the paroxysms of frenzy, as if the affected person were under the dominion of spells, and all arising from unnatural states of the uterus. How many incurable diseases also are brought on by unhealthy menstrual discharges, or from over-abstinence from sexual intercourse where the passions are strong!

Nor are the changes which take place in the virgin less observable when the uterus first begins to enlarge and receive warmth; the complexion is improved, the breasts enlarge, the countenance glows with beauty, the eyes lighten, the voice becomes harmonious; the gait, gestures, discourse, all are graceful. Serious maladies, too, are cured either at this period or never.

I am acquainted with a noble lady who for more than ten years laboured under furor uterinus and melancholy. After all remedies had been employed without success, she became affected with prolapsus uteri. Contrary to the opinion of others, I predicted that this last accident would prove salutary, and I recommended her not to replace the uterus until its over-heat had been moderated by the contact of the external air. Circumstances turned out as I anticipated, and in a short time she became quite well; the uterus was returned to its proper situation, and she lives in good health to the present day.

I also saw another woman who suffered long with hysterical symptoms, which would yield to no remedies. After many years her health was restored on the uterus becoming prolapsed. In both cases, when the violence of the symptoms was abated, I returned the uterus, and the event proved favorable. For the uterus, when stimulated by any acrid matter, not only falls down, but like the rectum irritated by a tenesmus, thrusts itself outwards.

Various, then, is the constitution of the uterus, and not only in its diseased, but also in its natural state, that is, at the periods of fecundity and barrenness. In young girls, as I said, and in women past childbearing, it is without blood, and about the size of a bean. In the marriageable virgin it has the magnitude and form of a pear. In women who have borne children, and are still fruitful, it equals in bulk a small gourd or a goose’s egg; at the same time, together with the breasts, it swells and softens, becomes more fleshy, and its heat is increased; whilst, to use Virgil’s expression with reference to the fields,

“Superat tener omnibus humor, Et genitalia semina poscunt.”

Wherefore women are most prone to conceive either just before or just subsequent to the menstrual flux, for at these periods there is a greater degree of heat and moisture, two conditions necessary to generation. In the same manner when other animals are in heat, the genital organs are moist and turgid.

Such is the state of the uterus as I have found it before birth. In pregnant women, as I have before stated, the uterus increases in proportion to the fœtus, and attains a great size. Immediately after birth, I have seen it as large as a man’s head, more than a thumb’s breadth in thickness, and loaded with vessels full of blood. It is, indeed, most wonderful, and, as Fabricius remarks, quite beyond human reason, how such a mass can diminish to so vast an extent in the space of fifteen or twenty days. It happens as follows: immediately on the expulsion of the fœtus and its membranes, the uterus gradually contracts, narrows its neck, and shrinks inwardly into itself; partly by a process of diaphoresis, partly by means of the lochia, its bulk insensibly lessens; and the neighbouring parts, bones, abdomen, and all the hypogastric region, at the same time diminish and recover their firmness. The lochial discharge at first resembles pure blood; it then becomes of a sanious character, like the washings of flesh, and is otherwise pale and serous. At this last stage, when no longer tinged with blood, the women call it “the coming of the milk,” for the reason probably that at that time the breasts are loaded with milk, and the lochia sensibly diminish; as if the nutritive matter was then transferred to the breasts from the uterus.

In other animals the process is shorter and simpler; in them the parts concerned recover their ordinary bulk and consistence in one or two days. In fact, some, as the hare and rabbit, admit the buck, and again become fecundated, an hour after kindling. In like manner, I have stated that the hen admits the cock immediately on laying. Women, as they alone have a menstruous, so have they alone a lochial discharge; added to which they are exposed to disorders and perils immediately after birth, either from the uterus, through feebleness, contracting too soon, or from the lochia becoming vitiated or suppressed. For it often happens, especially in delicate women, that foul and putrid lochia set up fevers and other violent symptoms. Because the uterus, torn and injured by the separation of the placenta, especially if any violence has been used, resembles a vast internal ulcer, and is cleansed and purified by the free discharge of the lochia. Therefore do we conclude as to the favorable or unfavorable state of the puerperal woman from the character of these excretions. For if any part of the placenta adhere to the uterus, the lochial discharges become fetid, green, and putrid; and sometimes the powers of the uterus are so reduced that gangrene is the result, and the woman is destroyed.

If clots of blood, or any other foreign matter, remain in the uterine cavity after delivery, the uterus does not retract nor close its orifice; but the cervix is found soft and open. This I ascertained in a woman, who, when laboring under a malignant fever, with great prostration of strength, miscarried of a fœtus exhibiting no marks of decomposition, and who afterwards lay in an apparently dying state, with a pulse scarcely to be counted, and cold sweats. Finding the uterine orifice soft and open, and the lochia very offensive, I suspected that something was undergoing decomposition within; whereupon I introduced the fingers and brought away a “mole” of the size of a goose’s egg, of a hard, fleshy, and almost cartilaginous consistence, and pierced with holes, which discharged a thick and fetid matter. The woman was immediately freed from her symptoms, and in a short time recovered.

When the neck of the uterus contracts in a moderate degree after birth, and certain pains, called by the midwives “after pains,” ensue, in consequence of the difficulty with which the clots are expelled, the case is considered a favorable one, and is so in fact; for it indicates vigour on the part of the uterus, and that it is inclined readily to contract to its usual bulk; the result of which is that the lochia are duly expelled, and health restored to the woman.

But I have observed in some women the uterine orifice so closed immediately after parturition, that the blood has been retained in the uterus, and then, becoming putrid, has induced the most dangerous symptoms; and when art did not avail to promote its exit, the woman has presently died.

A noble lady in childbed being attacked with fever for want of the ordinary lochial discharge, had the pudenda swollen and hot; finding the uterine orifice hard and firmly closed, I forcibly dilated the part by means of an iron instrument sufficiently to admit of my introducing a syringe and throwing up an injection; the effect of which was that grumous and fetid blood, to the amount of several pounds, flowed away, with present relief of the symptoms.

The wife of a doctor of divinity was brought to me; a lady of a very tolerable constitution, but who was barren, and having an extreme desire for progeny, had tried all kinds of prescriptions in vain. In her the catamenia appeared at their proper period; but at times, especially after horse exercise, a bloody and purulent discharge came from the uterus, and then, in a short time, ceased suddenly. Some considered the case as one of leucorrhœa; others, led chiefly by the fact that the discharge was not continually present, and in small quantities, but appeared by intervals and in abundance, suspected a fistulous ulcer; whereupon they examined the whole vagina by means of a speculum uteri, and applied various remedies, but in vain; when I was at length called to her. I opened the uterine orifice, and immediately two spoonfuls of pus came away of a sanious character and tinged with streaks of blood. On seeing this I said that there was a hidden ulcer in the uterine cavity, and by applying suitable remedies I restored her to her former state of health. But during the time when I was engaged in her cure, when the ordinary remedies did not appear to be doing much good, I applied stronger ones, suspecting as I did that the ulcer was of long standing, and perhaps covered by exuberant granulations. I therefore added a little Roman vitriol to the injection employed previously, the effect of which was to make the uterus contract suddenly and become as hard as a stone; at the same time various hysterical symptoms showed themselves, such, I mean, as are generally supposed by physicians to arise from constriction of the uterus, and the rising of “foul vapours” therefrom. The symptoms continued some time, until by the application of soothing and anodyne remedies the uterus relaxed its orifice; upon which the acrid injection, together with a putrid sanies, was expelled, and in a short time the patient recovered.

I have introduced this account from my “medical observations” for the purpose of showing how acutely sensible the uterus is, and how readily it closes on the approach of danger, especially when urgent symptoms accompany the puerperal state. Women are peculiarly subject to these accidents, especially those among them who lead a luxurious life, or whose health is naturally weak, and who easily fall into disorders. Country women, and those accustomed to a life of labour, do not become dangerously ill on such small grounds. Some of them may be found pregnant a month after delivery; whilst two months frequently elapse before others are able to set about the ordinary occupations of life.

It is laid down by Hippocrates,[375] that as many days are required for the “after-purgings” as there are for the formation of the fœtus; therefore there are more for a female than a male child. “But this,” says Scaliger,[376] “is false; for in none of our women do “the cleansings” last more than a month; in very many they cease on the fifteenth day; in some even on the seventh day; and I have seen a case where they lasted only until the third day, although the woman had borne twins.” Galen has many observations on this subject in his work περὶ κυουμένων, (On the Formation of the Fœtus.) In the New World, it is said that the woman keeps apart the day only on which she is delivered, and then returns to her ordinary occupations.

I will add, in conclusion, an extraordinary instance told me by the noble Lord George Carew, Earl of Totness, and long Lord-Lieutenant of Munster in Ireland--he who wrote the history of these times. A woman, great with child, was following her husband, who served as a soldier, and it happened that the army, when on the march, was compelled to halt for the space of an hour near a small river which impeded their passage; whereupon the woman, who felt her labour at hand, retired to a neighbouring thicket, and there, without the aid of a midwife or any other preparation, gave birth to twins; after she had washed both herself and them in the running stream, she wrapped the infants in a coarse covering, tied them on her back, and the same day marched barefoot twelve miles with the army, without the slightest harm ensuing. The following day the Viceroy, Earl Mountjoy, who at that time was leading an army against Kinsale, then occupied by the Spaniards, and the Earl of Totness, were so affected by the strange incident, that they appeared at the font, and had the infants called by their own names.

ON

THE UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS.

OF THE

UTERINE MEMBRANES AND HUMOURS.

“Four kinds of bodies” are enumerated by Hieronymus Fabricius[377] “as existing externally to the fœtus; these are the umbilical vessels, the membranes, the humours, and a fleshy substance.” On these subjects, guided by my observations, I shall briefly state wherein I differ from him; first, however, giving his statement in his own words.

“There are,” he says, “three membranes, two of which envelope the whole fœtus, but the third does not do so. Of those which envelope the whole fœtus, the innermost, immediately investing one, is called ἃμνιον, i. e. the mantle. That which follows next is entitled by the Greeks χόριον; the Latins, however, have not given it a name, although some interpreters have thought proper erroneously to call it “secundæ” or “secundina,” the secundines; this also envelopes the entire fœtus. The third is called ἀλλαντοειδὴς, i. e. gut-like, from its resemblance to a stuffed intestine; it does not entirely encompass the fœtus, but is applied upon the thorax and part of the abdomen, and extends to either horn of the uterus.” He allows that this last membrane is only found in the fœtus of the sheep and cow; he asserts also that it is continuous with the urachus, and by means of this receives the urine from the bladder. Hence, he goes on, “horned animals, in whom this allantois is found, have the urachus so wide and straight, that it resembles a small intestine; it gradually decreases in size until it reaches the fundus of the bladder; whence it would appear to owe its origin rather to the intestine than to the bladder itself. But in man and other animals furnished with incisors in both jaws, and in whom the allantois is wanting, the size of the urachus is so diminished, that although it rises from the fundus of the bladder as a single tube, it afterwards splits into innumerable fibres, which pass beyond the umbilicus together with the vessels, and carry the urine into the chorion, although the exact mode in which it does so cannot be demonstrated.” On this ground he accuses Arantius of a double error--first, his denial of the existence of the urachus in man; and, secondly, his assertion that the fœtus passes its urine through the genital organs.

For my own part, I must confess I am a willing party to the errors of Arantius, if errors they are to be called. For I am quite sure, if pressure be made on the bladder of a full-grown fœtus, whether of man or of any other animal, that urine will flow by the genitals. But I have never seen an urachus, nor observed that the urine is propelled into the membranes by making pressure on the bladder. I have indeed seen in the sheep and deer what appeared to be a process of bladder between the umbilical arteries, and which contained urine; but it in no way resembled the urachus as described by Fabricius. Not that I would obstinately deny the existence of an allantois; for the minor membranes are so delicate and transparent (those, for example, which we have described as existing between the two “whites” of the egg) that they may easily escape observation. Moreover, in the hen’s egg a white excrementitious matter, and even fæces are found between the colliquament and albumen, i. e. between the amnion and chorion; this I have mentioned before, and Coiterus has also observed it. Added to which, the membrane of the colliquament itself, in which the fœtus swims, although it is so exceedingly transparent and delicate that Fabricius himself allows nothing can be imagined more so, nevertheless (for according to him all membranes, however thin, are double) may nature sometimes find herself compelled to deposit urine or some other matter between its duplicatures. An allantois of this kind I am ready to allow Fabricius; but that other intestine-like body produced into either horn of the uterus, I do not discover among the membranes in cloven-footed animals, nor aught else, in fact, except the conception itself. I can only find, as I before said, a process of the bladder, situated between the umbilical arteries, which contains an excrementitious matter, and varies in length in different animals. Wherefore, in my opinion, the tunic which Fabricius calls the allantois is, in fact, the chorion; and the ancients applied the name of allantois to it on account of its resemblance to a double intestine. For that external membrane, constricted in the middle, and resembling a saddle-bag in form, which is stretched upwards to each horn of the uterus, and in its passage is pinched in by that part of the uterus which connects the horns, is in truth the chorion; and in the sheep, goat, roe, fallow-deer, and other cloven-footed animals, it can be raised by the hand in the middle of its course, and easily extracted whole; this is the same as what is called the “conception” or ovum. Like an egg, it contains within itself two fluids, and the fœtus with its appendages; it is possessed besides of those characters which Aristotle attributes to the egg; these are, that out of part of it the embryo is originally formed, and that the remainder constitutes the sustenance of the new animal, as has been frequently explained. I believe, then, the tunic which Fabricius called the allantois to be either the chorion or else some unnatural structure formed out of the reduplication of the membranes. It is accordingly only found to exist in some animals, and not always in these; it cannot be traced from the commencement of conception, and in some animals it is more apparent than in others: whilst in others nothing can be seen except a mere process of the bladder. Besides, Fabricius himself allows that its purpose is not to envelope the fœtus, but to contain its urine. In truth, I must think that he has described it rather to defend the doctrine of the ancients, than because he really believed he had discovered such a membrane, or that it served any good purpose. For he allows, with the ancients, and every medical school, that the chorion contains urine, when he says[378] that there are two humours encircling the fœtus, one, viz. in the amnion, consisting of sweat; the other in the chorion, consisting of urine. It is, therefore, clear that the ancients under the two names understood one and the same membrane; and that in the cloven-footed animals they called it “allantois,” on account of its form; but in others “chorion,” because they thought its object was to receive the urine. Wherefore they allow that this tunic is neither found in man nor any of the other animals. For what need can there be of another tunic to retain the urine, when they themselves admit that the office of doing so belongs especially to the chorion? There can be no probable reason assigned why this tunic should exist in the sheep, goat, and the other cloven-footed animals, and not also in the dog, cat, mouse, and others. For in truth, if the object of this membrane were to contain the urine, the fœtus of the sheep and cow must secrete a much larger quantity than those of animals furnished with incisors in both jaws; there must then either be three different humours, or at least two receptacles for the urine. For myself, I am sure that the chorion from the first is full of water. I will not, however, enter into controversies; I would rather record what I have found by my own observations.

To do as Fabricius has done, and give the structure of the full-grown and perfect embryo, is one thing, but it is another to enter fully on the subject of its generation and first formation: just as they are very different things to describe the ripe fruit of an apple or any other tree, and to explain the manner in which it is produced from the germ. I will, therefore, briefly go through the stages by which the “conception” is brought to maturity, in which way the true doctrines in the matter of the membranes and other fœtal appendages will be better ascertained.

In the production of all living creatures, as I have before said, this invariably holds, that they derive their origin from a certain primary something or primordium which contains within itself both the “matter” and the “efficient cause;” and so is, in fact, the matter out of which, and that by which, whatsoever is produced is made. Such a primary something in animals (whether they spring from parents, or arise spontaneously, or from putrefaction) is a moisture inclosed in some membrane or shell; a similar body, in fact, having life within itself either actually or potentially; and this, if it is generated within an animal and remain there, until it produce an “univocal” (not equivocal) animal, is commonly called a “conception;” but if it is exposed to the air by birth, or assumes its beginning under other circumstances, (than within an animal), it is then denominated an “egg,” or “worm.” I think, however, that in either case the word “primordium” should be used to express that from whence the animal is formed; just as plants owe their origin to seeds: all these “primordia” have one common property--that of vitality.

I find a “primordium” of this kind in the uterus of all viviparous animals before any trace of a fœtus appears: there is a clear, thick, white fluid (like the albumen of the egg) inclosed in a membrane, and this I call the ovum. In the roe, fallow-deer, sheep, and other cloven-footed animals, it fills the whole uterus and both its horns.

In process of time an extremely limpid and pure watery fluid (similar to that which in the hen’s egg I have called the colliquament) is secreted by this “primordium” or “ovum;” in clearness and brilliancy far exceeding the remaining fluid of the ovum in which it is contained. It is of a circular form, and inclosed in a very delicate and transparent membrane of its own called the “amnion.” The other fluid, of a denser and thicker character, is contained in the outer envelope, or chorion, which is in immediate contact with the concave surface of the uterus, and which also encompasses the entire ovum: the shape of this second membrane varies according to that of the uterus: in some animals it is oval, in others oblong, but in those with cloven feet it resembles a saddle-bag. After a short time a red pulsating point shows itself within the transparent substance, and from this point exceedingly fine twigs, or rather rays of vessels, start forth. By and by the first aggregated portion of the body makes its appearance, folded upon itself orbicularly, and somewhat resembling a grub: the remaining parts follow in the order described in our history. For I have ascertained that the production of the fœtus from their ova or “conceptions” in viviparous animals, takes place exactly in the same way as the growth of the chick within the egg.

As I before observed, “conceptions” in viviparous animals vary in form, number, and in their modes of attachment to the uterus. At first, especially in the cloven-footed animals, the “conception” does not adhere to the uterus, but is only in contact with, and fills and distends the organ, and can be easily extracted entire. In cloven-footed animals, which conceive within the horns of the uterus, and also in the solidungula, one ovum only of this kind is found, and that stretching up into either horn of the uterus: and although these animals sometimes produce one, sometimes two young at a birth, and so sometimes one, sometimes two colliquaments are found, one in the right, the other in the left horn of the uterus, yet the two are always contained in one and the same ovum.

In other animals, however, the number of ova answers to the number of fœtuses, and within them are as many colliquaments: this is the case in the dog, cat, mouse, and other animals of this kind with teeth in either jaw. In cloven-footed animals the ovum is shaped like a saddle-bag: the form, in fact, under which Fabricius represented the allantois. In the mare, the figure of the uterus internally resembles an oblong bag; in the woman it is of a globular form.

In animals in whom the “conception” adheres to the uterus, (and in very many it does not do so until the fœtus is fully formed), this takes place in various modes. In some it is adherent in one place by the intervention of a fleshy substance, which in the woman is called the “placenta,” from its resemblance to a round cake (placenta): in others it is attached at many points by certain fleshy bodies, or “carunculæ:” these are five in number in the hind and doe; more numerous, but of smaller size, in the cow; and in the sheep they are in great numbers and of various sizes. In dogs and cats these fleshy bodies entirely surround each ovum like a girdle. A similar substance, in the hare and mole, grows to the side of the uterus: like the human placenta, which embraces about half the “conception,” (just as the cup does the acorn at the commencement of its growth), it is attached by its convex aspect to the uterus, and by its concave surface to the chorion.

With these observations premised, I shall now state my opinions on the humours, membranes, fleshy substance of the uterus, and the distribution of the umbilical vessels, in the order described by Fabricius.

The words δεύτερα and ὔστερα are correctly understood by Fabricius[379] to answer to “secundæ” and “secundina” (the secundines): and by these are implied not only the membranes, but everything which comes away from the uterus at the last stage of parturition, or at least not long after it, viz. the humours, membranes, fleshy substance, and umbilical vessels.

Of the Humours.

The doctrines inculcated on the subject of the humours, and which, as being entertained by the ancients, Fabricius regards as certain truths requiring no farther proof, are altogether inconsistent and false; the doctrines, I mean, that the fluid within the amnion, wherein the fœtus swims, consists of sweat; and that within the chorion of urine. For both these humours are found in the “conception” before any trace of the fœtus is visible; added to which, the fluid they call urine can be seen before that which they regard as sweat. In truth, these humours, especially the outer one, may be observed in unfruitful conceptions where nothing like a fœtus is discoverable.

Women sometimes expel conceptions of this kind, analogous to the subventaneous or wind egg. Aristotle[380] says they are called “fluxes;” among ourselves they are termed “false conceptions,” or “slips.” An ovum of this kind was aborted in the case of Hippocrates’s pipe-player. “In all creatures,” we are informed on the authority of Aristotle,[381] “which breed another within themselves, immediately on conception an egg-like body is formed; that is to say, a body in which a fluid is contained within a delicate membrane just like an egg with the shell removed.” The humour in the chorion, which Fabricius and other physicians consider to be urine, Aristotle seems to have regarded as the seminal fluid (spermatis sive genituræ liquor). He says,[382] “when the semen is received into the uterus, after a certain time it becomes surrounded by a membrane, and if expulsion takes place before the fœtus is formed, it has the appearance of an egg with the shell removed and covered by its membrane: this membrane, moreover, is loaded with vessels.” It is, in fact, the chorion; so called from the conflux or multitude of veins. I have often observed ova of this kind escape in the second and third month; they are frequently decomposed internally, and come away gradually in the form of a leucorrhœal discharge, and thus the hopes of the parent are lost.

Another reason why these humours cannot be sweat and urine, is, that they exist in such abundance at the very beginning;--for the purpose, no doubt, of preventing the body of the fœtus from coming in contact with the adjacent parts when the mother runs, jumps, or uses violent exertion of any kind.

Added to which, many animals never sweat at all, (and we must remember what is said by Aristotle,[383] “that all creatures which swim, walk, or fly,” I will add serpents and insects, whether viviparous or oviparous, or generated spontaneously, “are produced after the same manner,”) as is the case with birds, serpents, and fishes, which neither sweat nor pass urine. The dog and cat also never sweat; neither in fact does any animal in which the urinary secretion is very abundant. Besides, it is impossible that urine can be passed before the kidneys and bladder are formed.

Moreover, and this is the strongest argument that can be brought forward, those humours can never be excrementitious into which so many branches of the umbilical vessels are distributed by means of the chorion; these vessels, in fact, in this manner taking up nourishment, (as it were from a large reservoir,) and then conducting it to the fœtus.

Besides what need is there of an allantois, if the fluid within the chorion is urine? And if that in the amnion is sweat, why does Nature, who contrives all things well, ordain that the fœtus should float about in its own excrement? And why, too, should the mother (as is the case with some animals) immediately after birth, so greedily devour the excretions of its own offspring, together with the containing membranes? Some have even observed that if the animal fails to eat up these matters it does not give its milk freely.

Notwithstanding these arguments, it may possibly be imagined by some that the humours which I believe serve for the nutrition of the fœtus are excrementitious, led chiefly by the fact that they increase as the fœtus grows larger, and in some animals are observed to exist in immense quantities at the period of birth (at which time it might be supposed that all alimentary matters would have been absorbed), and serve besides other uses hardly compatible with their supposed function of nutrition. I nevertheless most confidently assert my belief that these humours are at the commencement destined for the nourishment of the fœtus, just as the colliquament and albumen are in the case of the chick; but that, in course of time, when the thinner and purer portions are absorbed, the remainder takes on the character of excrementitious matter, but still has its uses, and in some animals especially conduces to the safety of the fœtus, and also greatly facilitates birth. For just as wine becomes poor and tasteless when the spirit has evaporated; and as all excreted matters owe their origin for the most part to what has been previously food; so, after all the nutrient portions of the fluid contained in the chorion have been taken up by the fœtus, the remainder become excrementitious, and is applied to the above-mentioned uses. But all the fluid of the amnion is usually consumed by the time of birth; so that it is probable the fœtus seeks its exit on account of deficiency of nutriment.

Lastly, if any other fluid is ever contained within the allantois, and this is sometimes the case, I believe it to be unnatural. For sometimes we see women at their delivery have an enormous flow of water, sometimes a distinctly double flow; and this the midwives call the “by-waters.” And so some women are seen with the abdomen immensely distended, and yet they bring forth a little shrivelled fœtus accompanied by a vast flow of water. Some imagine that a larger quantity of water is found with weakly and female children, whilst stronger and male fœtuses have a smaller share. I have often seen the waters come away in the middle of pregnancy, and abortion not take place, the child remaining strong and vigorous until birth. Since, then, there are naturally two collections of fluid, one in the chorion, the other in the amnion, so it sometimes happens that unnatural accumulations take place either in membranes of their own, or between the duplicatures of the chorion.

Of the Membranes.

With respect to the membranes or tunics of the uterus; as their special office is to contain the “waters,” and as these waters are two only, it is pretty certain that the membranes themselves do not necessarily or usually exceed that number.

Those who enumerate three tunics are, I believe, in error, owing to the ancients having described the same membrane at one time under the title of “chorion,” from the concourse of veins, at another under the name of “allantois” from its form.

Unquestionably, every “conception” is inclosed in two envelopes, just as the brain is surrounded by its two membranes; every tree and fruit, moreover, has its double bark; and lastly, seeds and fruits are protected by a double covering, the outermost of which is harder and stronger than the inner one.

Of the above-mentioned membranes, the innermost (that which contains the colliquament or purer fluid,) is exceedingly delicate; it is called the “amnion,” i.e. the mantle, from the way in which it is disposed round the fœtus. The outer tunic, however, is much thicker and stronger, and has received the name of “chorion,” “because,” says Fabricius, “a multitude of arteries and veins are aggregated together and arranged in it, as it were, after the manner of a chorus. Hence one of the tunics of the eye has been denominated χοροειδὴς (choroid) from its vessels having a similar arrangement to those in the chorion; the plexus of arteries and veins in the ventricles of the brain has also gained its name from the same circumstance.”

The chorion fills the whole uterus, and contains a viscid and rather turbid fluid; whilst the placenta, or carunculæ, adhere to its outer surface, and thus attach the “conception” to the uterus.

In the woman it is usually adherent to the amnion at its lower portion; nor can it be separated there without difficulty. In cloven-footed animals the chorion is of very large size, and contains a hundred times more fluid than the amnion: this last membrane at first is scarcely as large as a nutmeg, or broad bean, and is generally found in one or other horn of the uterus; that, namely, in which the embryo lies.

In the woman, more particularly, the chorion is externally rough and viscous, but internally it is smooth, slippery, and interwoven with abundance of vessels. In the woman, also, the upper part is thick and soft, but the lower is thinner and more membranous in character.

The placenta in the woman grows to the upper part of this membrane. In the sheep, numerous carunculæ adhere to it at various points. In the fallow and red deer the ovum is united to the uterus in five places only; whilst in the mare it is in contact with the inner surface of the uterus by an almost infinite number of points of attachment. Hence Fabricius[384] states that in almost all viviparous animals there is a soft, loose, porous, and thick fleshy body of a dark colour, in intimate union with the terminations of the umbilical vessels; he compares it to a sponge, or to the loose parenchyma of the liver or spleen; hence, too, it was called by Galen[385] “glandular flesh;” and it is now commonly known by the name of the uterine liver, in which the extremities of the umbilical vessels ramify to bring nutriment from the uterus to the fœtus.

But this fleshy substance is not found in all animals, nor at all periods of utero-gestation; but in those alone in which the conception adheres to the uterus; and then only when it becomes attached for the purpose of taking up nutriment. At the commencement the “conception” (like an egg placed within the uterus) is found in contact with every part of the uterus, yet at no point is it adherent; but produces and nourishes the embryo out of the humours contained within it, as I have explained in the instance of the hen’s egg. This adhesion, or growing together, first takes place, and the fleshy mass (constituting the bond of union between the “conception” and the uterus) is first produced, when the fœtus becomes perfectly formed, and, through want either of different or more abundant nourishment, dispatches the extremities of the umbilical vessels to the uterus, that from hence, (as plants do from the earth by their radicles) it may absorb the nutrient juices. For in the beginning, as I have said, when the “punctum saliens” and the blood can alone be seen, the ramifications of the umbilical vessels are only visible in the colliquament and amnion. When, however, the fabric of the body is completely formed, the ramifications extend further, and are distributed in vast numbers throughout the chorion, that from the albuminous fluid which there exists, they may obtain nourishment for the fœtus.

Hence it is manifest that the young of viviparous animals are at the beginning nourished in exactly the same manner as the chick in the egg; and that they are detained within the uterus in order that (when they can no longer supply themselves with nutriment from their own stores) they may form adhesions to it by means of this fleshy substance, and receiving more abundant supplies of food from the mother, may be nourished and made to grow.

Wherefore Fabricius has rightly observed, that in some animals the “conception” is scarcely attached to the uterus at all. Thus the sow and the mare have no such fleshy mode of union,--but in them the ovum or “conception,” as in the beginning it is formed out of the humours of the uterus, so it is nourished subsequently by the same means; just as the ovum of the hen is supplied with aliment at the expense of the albuminous matter without any connexion whatever with the uterus: and thus the fœtus is furnished with aliment by the “conception” in which it is contained, and is nourished as the chick is from the fluids of the egg. This is a strong argument that the fœtus of viviparous animals is no more nourished by the blood of the mother than the chick in the egg; and moreover, that the fluid within the chorion is neither urine nor any other excrementitious matter; but serves for the support of the fœtus. Although, as I have before remarked, it is possible when all the nutrient portions have been taken up, the remainder may degenerate into excrementitious matter resembling urine. This is also clear from what I formerly observed of the cotyledons in the deer, viz., that in these animals the fleshy mass was of a spongy character, and constituted, like a honeycomb, of innumerable shallow pits filled with a muco-albuminous fluid, (a circumstance already observed by Galen[386]); and that from this source the ramifications of the umbilical vessels absorbed the nutriment and carried it to the fœtus: just as, in animals after their birth, the extremities of the mesenteric vessels are spread over the coats of the intestines and thence take up chyle.

Of the Placenta.

In my opinion, then, the placenta and carunculæ have an office analogous to that of the liver and mamma. The liver elaborates for the nourishment of the body, the chyle previously taken up from the intestines: the placenta, in like manner, prepares for the fœtus alimentary matters which have come from the mother. The mammæ also, which are of a glandular structure, swell with milk, and although in some animals they are not even visible at other times, they become full and tumid at the period of pregnancy; so, too, the placenta, a loose and fungus-like body, abounds in an albuminous fluid, and is only to be found at the period of pregnancy. The liver, I say, then, is the nutrient organ of the body in which it is found; the mamma is the same of the infant, and the placenta of the embryo. And just as the mother forms more milk from her food than is requisite to sustain her own flesh and blood, which milk is digested and elaborated in the mamma; so do those animals, furnished with a placenta, supply to the fœtus nourishment which is purified in that organ. Hence it happens that the embryo is furnished with good or bad nutriment just as the mother takes wholesome or unwholesome food, and in proportion as it is elaborately prepared or not in these uterine structures. For some embryos have a more perfect structure provided for them, such as that fleshy substance mentioned above, which in some is altogether wanting. In some, also, the placenta is observed to be thicker, larger, and more loaded with blood; whilst in others it is more spongy and white, like the thymus or pancreas. But there is not more variety found in the placenta than in the mamma or viscera generally: for instance, the liver in some animals is red and filled with blood, in others, as is the case with fishes and some cachectic persons in the human species, it is of much paler hue. The mare feeds on crude grass, and does not ruminate; the sow gorges itself with any unclean food; and in both the placenta, or organ for perfecting the aliment, is wanting.

Rightly then is it observed by Fabricius,[387] that “this fleshy structure, differs much in shape, size, position, and number in different kinds of animals. The human female has one placenta only; as is the case with the mouse, rabbit, guinea-pig, dog, and cat:” so also with many animals which have the toes distinct, and incisor teeth in both jaws. “All those which have the hoof cloven and incisors in one jaw only, have several placentæ, whether they be domesticated animals, like the sheep, cow, and goat, or wild, as the red-deer, roe, fallow-deer, and others of the same kind. Again, where there is only one of these fleshy structures it either resembles a cake, (whence its name placenta), as in the human female, rabbit, hare, mole, mouse, and guinea-pig; or else it is like a girdle or bandage encircling the trunk of the body, as in the dog, cat, ferret, and the like.” In some it resembles the cup or chalice of the acorn, and surrounds the greater part of the “conception,” as in the hare and rabbit, its convex part adhering to the uterus, the concave looking towards the fœtus. “Again, in animals which have this structure in the form of a cake, although the shape is similar, the situation in which it is found is very different. In the human female it adheres to the fundus of the uterus, and is as far removed from the fœtus as possible, their connexion being effected by means of long vessels. In the mouse, guinea-pig, and rabbit, it is attached partly in the region of the loins, partly at the sides of the thorax. Those animals which have numerous placentæ are all furnished with incisors in one jaw only, as the sheep, cow, goat, red-deer, roe, and the like. Yet in these some variety is observable.”

For in the sheep the carunculæ are many in number, and of different magnitudes, the largest being of the size of a nutmeg, the smallest of that of a pea or vetch: they are also of a rounded form and reddish hue, with their convex portion turned towards the uterus, something in the semblance of soft warts or nipples. “In the cow they are larger, wider, and whiter, more like a spongy or fungoid body,” and they appear to take their origin from the chorion. In the red or fallow-deer they are five only in number; these spring from the walls of the uterus, and thrust themselves inwards, exhibiting their depressions or acetabula on the side of the fœtus. But in all animals it is observed that the carunculæ adhere firmly to the uterus, and cannot be separated from it without considerable difficulty, except at the period of birth; at which time they become loosened from their attachments and fall like ripe fruit. If they are forcibly torn from the uterus, I have observed the greater part of the blood that escapes to flow, not from the “conception,” but from the uterus itself.

Fabricius,[388] when discussing the mode of union between the “fleshy substance” and the uterus, uses many arguments, but in my opinion weak ones, to prove that the umbilical vessels anastomose with those of the uterus: yet he seems chiefly to have done so to countenance the old opinion once held almost by all; for he confesses that he can make no positive assertion on the subject, “because the fleshy mass itself stands in the way of any accurate investigation.” Yet neither reason nor observation would lead us to believe that more anastomoses exist in the uterus, than in the liver between the branches of the vena portæ and the cava; or in the mamma, between the vessels which transmit blood and those which carry milk. There may be, indeed, at places a juxtaposition of vessels, and sometimes the insertion of one into the coats of another; but the perfect coalition and union, described by Fabricius, never exist. Were it so, the veins and arteries ought to be continuous; for the vessels which bring the blood from the mother into the uterus and carunculæ are arteries, whilst those which pass from the uterus to the fœtus are veins, as is readily apparent; for they carry blood from the placenta into the vena cava.

Hence the opinion of Arantius seems to me to be the true one, viz. that the orifices of the umbilical veins are in no way continuous with the uterine vessels. For there is a smaller number of vessels carrying blood to the uterus than there is of veins returning it to the fœtus; and the greater part of the roots of those terminate in the chorion. Yet Fabricius, either from respect to the ancients, or through an envious feeling towards Arantius, most pertinaciously holds to the old opinion.

Of the Acetabula.

Fabricius[389] has ascertained nothing on the subject of the “cotyledons” or “acetabula;” he gives only the various opinions of the ancients. In the former part of my work, however, in the history of the fœtus in the deer, I have mentioned the animals in which acetabula are found; at the same time I described them as constituting numerous cells of a small size scattered throughout the carunculæ, or “fleshy substance,” and filled with an albuminous or mucilaginous fluid, like a honeycomb full of honey.

In the deer they greatly resemble in shape the cavity of the haunch-bone which receives the head of the thigh; hence their name in Greek, κοτυλήδονες (little measures); and in Latin, acetabula, because they resemble the little cups formerly brought to table filled with vinegar for sauce.

These cavities do not exceed in size the holes in a large sponge, and a delicate ramification of the umbilical vessels penetrates deeply into each of them; for in them aliment is laid up for the fœtus, not indeed constituted of blood, as Fabricius would have it, but matter of a mucous character, and greatly resembling the thicker part of the albumen in the egg. Hence it is clear, as I have before observed, that the fœtus in cloven-footed animals (as indeed in all others) is not nourished by the blood of the mother.

Aristotle’s[390] statement, “that the acetabula gradually diminish with the growth of the fœtus, and at last disappear,” is not borne out by experiment; for as the fœtus increases so do the carunculæ; the acetabula at the same time become more capacious and numerous, and more full of the albuminous matter.

If the carunculæ are pressed no blood escapes, but just as water or honey can be squeezed from a sponge or honeycomb, so if pressure is made a whitish fluid oozes from out of the acetabula, which then become shrunk, white, and flaccid, and at last come to resemble a nipple, or a large flabby wart.

Aristotle asserts, with truth, that acetabula are not found in all animals; for they do not exist in the woman, nor (as far as I know) in any animal which possesses a single fleshy substance or placenta. As to the uses of the carunculæ, I believe that, like the mamma, they elaborate not blood but a fluid resembling albumen, and that this serves for the nourishment of the fœtus.

Of the Umbilical Cord.

Fabricius gives an elegant description, as well as most beautiful figures, of the umbilical vessels. “The veins,” he says,[391] “which pass from the uterus in the direction of the fœtus are always closely united and become larger and larger as they proceed; nor does this mutual interlacement cease until all end in two large trunks; these penetrate the fœtus at the umbilicus, and become one vein of great size, which is inserted into the liver of the fœtus, and has a communication both with the vena cava and vena portæ. In like manner the arteries which accompany the veins, being many in number and exceedingly minute, pass from the uterus towards the fœtus, and, gradually uniting and increasing in size, terminate in two large trunks; these, after penetrating the umbilicus, separate from the veins, and attaching themselves to the lateral surface of the bladder by the intervention of a membrane, proceed downwards on either side and become continuous with the branches of the aorta descending to the thigh.” It must be observed, however, that this description of Fabricius applies only to the umbilical vessels of the human fœtus, and not to the young of every animal. Nor even does it hold in the case of the human fœtus except when it is full grown; for at the beginning the arteries make little show, and are so small as to require the eyes of a lynx to see them; nor afterwards indeed are they distinguishable except by their pulsation: in other particulars they resemble veins. Since then, as I have elsewhere shown, the very small branches of arteries do not pulsate, in so far as the eye is concerned, there can be no difference between them and veins. The arteries, I say, at this time are so fine and minute, that they are woven, as it were, like the most delicate threads, into the tissues of the veins, or rather in some obscure manner insinuate themselves into them; hence they almost entirely elude the sight. But all the veins, by a retrograde movement, unite their twigs and terminate in one trunk like the branches of a tree, in the same manner as the mesenteric veins, all of which terminate in the vena portæ.

Near the embryo [the umbilical veins] are divided into two trunks, but when entered within it they constitute one umbilical vein, which ends in the vena cava, near the right auricle of the heart, and passes through the liver, entering the vena portæ; giving off no branches besides until it leaves the convex portion of the liver by a very large orifice. So that if the vena cava is opened from the right auricle downwards and emptied of blood, three apertures may be seen close to each other; one is the entrance of the vena cava descendens, the second that of the hepatic vein, which ramifies throughout the convex portion of the liver, and the third is the origin of the umbilical vein. Hence it is quite clear that the origin of the veins is by no means to be looked for in the liver; inasmuch as the orifice of the vena cava descendens is much larger than the hepatic branch, which is indeed equalled in size by the umbilical vein. For the branches are not said to be the origin of their trunk; but where the trunk is greatest there the origin of the veins is to be looked for, and this is the case at the entrance of the right ventricle: here, then, the origin of all veins, and the storehouse of the blood must be placed.

To return to the umbilical vessels, which are not subdivided in the same way in all animals; for in some two or more branches of veins are found within the body of the fœtus,--some of which pass through the liver, whilst others join the portal and mesenteric veins. In the human fœtus, at a distance of three or four fingers’ breadth from the umbilicus, the trunks of the arteries and veins are involved together in a complicated manner, (as if one were to twist several waxen tapers in the form of a stick,) and are besides covered and held together by a thick gelatinous membrane. This cord passes on towards the chorion, and when arrived at the concave portion of the placenta and the inner surface of the chorion, splits into innumerable branches; these divide again, and constitute the means by which the nutrient matter is taken up, as by rootlets, and distributed to the fœtus. The veins of the cord are marked at various places by knots or varices, resembling vesicles filled with blood; this is a contrivance of nature to prevent the blood rushing too violently to the fœtus. From the number of these knots superstitious midwives are accustomed to predict the number of the future offspring; and if none can be seen at all they pronounce that the woman will be ever after barren: they also absurdly prophesy by the distance between the knots about the interval to take place between the birth of each child, and also of its sex from their colour.

A like arrangement of the umbilical vessels is found in almost all fœtuses furnished with a single placenta, as in the dog, mouse, and others; but in these the cord is shorter and less convoluted. In the ox, sheep, red-deer, fallow-deer, hog, and others, in which the nutrient material is not supplied from one fleshy mass or placenta, but from several, the umbilical vessels are distributed in a different manner. The branches and extremities of these vessels are not only disseminated through the fleshy substance, but still more and chiefly through the membrane of the chorion itself by means of the most delicate fibres; exactly in the same way as the vessels are distributed in the human fœtus, without the aid of the cord, before the “conception” adheres to the uterus. Hence it is plain that the embryo does not derive all its nourishment from the placenta, but receives a considerable portion of it from the fluid contained in the chorion.

As to the uses of the umbilical vessels, I cannot agree with Fabricius, for he imagines that all the blood is supplied to the fœtus from the uterus by means of the veins, and that the vital spirits are transmitted from the mother by the arteries. He also asserts that no part of the fœtus performs any common function, but that each individual portion looks only to itself, how it may be nourished, grow, and be preserved. In like manner, because he has found no nerve in the umbilical cord, he refuses to allow sensation or voluntary motion to the fœtus. Just as if the uterus or placenta of the mother were the heart or first source whence these functions are derived to the fœtus, and whence heat flows in and is distributed through all its parts. All these are manifest errors. For the human fœtus, even before the completion of the fourth month, (in some animals sooner,) in no obscure manner moves, rolls about, and kicks, especially if it suffer from cold, heat, or any external source of inconvenience. Moreover, the “punctum saliens” (whilst yet the heart is not) moves to and fro, with an evident pulsation, and distributes blood and spirits; and this part, as I have before stated, if languid and nearly extinct through cold, will, if warmth be applied, again be restored and live. In the Cæsarean section, also, it is quite clear that the life of the embryo does not immediately depend upon the mother, and that the spirits do not proceed from her; for I have often seen the fœtus extracted alive from the uterus when the mother has been dead some hours. I have also known the rabbit and hare survive when extracted from the uterus of the dead mother. Besides, in a tedious labour we learn whether the infant is alive or not by the pulsation of the umbilical arteries; and it is certain that these arteries receive their impulse from the heart of the fœtus and not of the mother, for the rhythm of the two differs: this can be easily ascertained if one hand is applied to the wrist of the mother and the other to the umbilical cord. Nay, in the Cæsarean section, when the embryo is still enveloped in the chorion, I have often found the umbilical arteries pulsating, and the fœtus lively, even when the mother was dead and her limbs stiffened. It is not, therefore, true that the “spirits” pass from the mother to the fœtus through the arteries; nor is it more so that the umbilical or fœtal vessels anastomose with those of the uterus. The fœtus has a proper life of its own, and possesses pulsating arteries filled with blood and “spirits,” long before the “conception,” in which it is formed and dwells, is attached to the uterus; just as it is with the chick in the egg.

In my treatise on the Circulation of the Blood I have shown the uses of the arteries, both in the fœtus and in the adult, to be very different from what is generally supposed, and my views receive confirmation from the subject now under consideration.

In truth, the “secundines” are part of the “conception,” and depend upon it, borrowing thence their life and faculty of growth. For, just as in the mesentery, the blood is propelled to the intestines by the branches of the cœliac and mesenteric arteries, and returns thence by means of the veins to the liver and heart, together with the chyle, so in like manner do the umbilical arteries carry the blood to the secundines; which blood, together with the nutrient fluid, is brought back by the veins to the fœtus. Hence it is that these arteries do not proceed immediately from the heart, as if they were the principal vessels, but take their origin from the arteries of the lower limbs, as being of inferior rank, use, and magnitude.

Adrian Spigelius lately published a book entitled ‘On the Formation of the Fœtus’ (de Formato Fœtu); in which he treats of the uses of the umbilical arteries, and proves, by powerful arguments, that the fœtus does not receive vital “spirits” from the mother through the arteries; he also answers fully the arguments on the other side. He could also have shown by the same arguments that neither is the blood transferred to the fœtus from the vessels of the mother by means of the branches of the umbilical veins; this is especially clear from the case of the hen’s egg, and also of the Cæsarean section. In truth, if heat and life flow to the blood from the mother, should she die the child must straightway be destroyed also, for the same fatality must attach to both; nay, the child must be the first to perish; for as dissolution approaches, the subordinate parts languish and grow chill before the principal ones, and so the heart fails last of all. The blood, I mean of the fœtus, would be the first to lose its heat and become unfit to perform its functions were it derived from the uterus, since the uterus would be deprived of all vital heat before the heart.

ON CONCEPTION.

Fabricius has indeed recounted many wonderful things on the subject of parturition; for my own part, I think there is more to admire and marvel at in conception. It is a matter, in truth, full of obscurity; yet will I venture to put forth a few things--rather though as questions proposed for solution--that I may not appear to subvert other men’s opinions only, without bringing forward anything of my own. Yet what I shall state I wish not to be taken as if I thought it a voice from an oracle, or desired to gain the assent of others by violence; I claim, however, that liberty which I willingly yield to others, the permission, viz. in subjects of difficulty to put forward as true such things as appear to be probable until proved to be manifestly false.

It is to the uterus that the business of conception is chiefly intrusted: without this structure and its functions conception would be looked for in vain. But since it is certain that the semen of the male does not so much as reach the cavity of the uterus, much less continue long there, and that it carries with it a fecundating power by a kind of contagious property, (not because it is then and there in actual contact, or operates, but because it previously has been in contact); the woman, after contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to receive influence, and to become fecundated without the co-operation of any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the magnet is endowed with its powers and can attract other iron to itself. When this virtue is once received the woman exercises a plastic power of generation, and produces a being after her own image; not otherwise than the plant, which we see endowed with the forces of both sexes.

Yet it is a matter of wonder where this faculty abides after intercourse is completed, and before the formation of the ovum or “conception.” To what is this active power of the male committed? is it to the uterus solely, or to the whole woman? or is it to the uterus primarily and to the woman secondarily? or, lastly, does the woman conceive in the womb, as we see by the eye and think by the brain?

For although the woman conceiving after intercourse sometimes produces no fœtus, yet we know that phenomena occur which clearly indicate that conception has really taken place, although without result. Over-fed bitches, which admit the dog without fecundation following, are nevertheless observed to be sluggish about the time they should have whelped, and to bark as they do when their time is at hand, also to steal away the whelps from another bitch, to tend and lick them, and also to fight fiercely for them. Others have milk or colostrum, as it is called, in their teats, and are, moreover, subject to the diseases of those which have actually whelped; the same thing is seen in hens which cluck at certain times, although they have no eggs on which to sit. Some birds also, as pigeons, if they have admitted the male, although they lay no eggs at all, or only barren ones, are found equally sedulous in building their nests.

The virtue which proceeds from the male in coitu has such prodigious power of fecundation, that the whole woman, both in mind and body, undergoes a change. And although it is the uterus made ready for this, on which the first influences are impressed, and from which virtue and strength are diffused throughout the body, the question still remains, how it is that the power thus communicated remains attached to the uterus? is it to the whole uterus or only to a part of it? nothing is to be found within it after coitus, for the semen in a short time either falls out or evaporates, and the blood, its circle completed, returns from the uterus by the vessels.

Again, what is this preparation or maturity of the uterus which eagerly demands the fecundating seed? whence does it proceed? Certain it is, unless the uterus be ready for coition every attempt at fecundation is vain; nay, in some animals, at no other time is the male admitted. It happens occasionally, I allow, that this maturity arrives earlier in some from the solicitations of the male animal; it is itself, however, a purely natural result, just as is the ripening of the fruit in trees. What these changes are I will now recount, as I have found them by observation.

The uterus first appears more thick and fleshy; then its inner surface, the future residence, that is, of the “conception,” becomes softer, and resembles in smoothness and delicacy the ventricles of the brain; this I have already described in the deer and other cloven-footed tribes. But in the dog, cat, and other multiparous and digitated animals, the horns of the uterus--clearly corresponding to the round tubes of the woman [Fallopian tubes], the appendices of the intestines in birds, or the ureters in man--exhibit little protuberances at certain intervals, which swell up and become extremely soft; these, after intercourse, appear to open themselves, (as I have observed in deer;) from them the first white fluid transudes into the uterus, and out of this the “conception,” or ovum, is formed. In this way the uterus, by means of the male, (like fruit by the summer’s heat,) is brought to the highest pitch of maturity, and becomes impregnated.

But since there are no manifest signs of conception before the uterus begins to relax, and the white fluid or slender threads (like the spider’s web) constituting the “primordium” of the future “conception,” or ovum, shows itself; and since the substance of the uterus, when ready to conceive, is very like the structure of the brain, why should we not suppose that the function of both is similar, and that there is excited by coitus within the uterus a something identical with, or at least analogous to, an “imagination” (phantasma) or a “desire” (appetitus) in the brain, whence comes the generation or procreation of the ovum? For the functions of both are termed “conceptions,” and both, although the primary sources of every action throughout the body, are immaterial, the one of natural or organic, the other of animal actions; the one (viz. the uterus) the first cause and beginning of every action which conduces to the generation of the animal, the other (viz. the brain) of every action done for its preservation. And just as a “desire” arises from a conception of the brain, and this conception springs from some external object of desire, so also from the male, as being the more perfect animal, and, as it were, the most natural object of desire, does the natural (organic) conception arise in the uterus, even as the animal conception does in the brain.

From this desire, or conception, it results that the female produces an offspring like the father. For just as we, from the conception of the “form” or “idea” in the brain, fashion in our works a form resembling it, so, in like manner, the “idea,” or “form,” of the father existing in the uterus generates an offspring like himself with the help of the formative faculty, impressing, however, on its work its own immaterial “form.” In the same way art, which in the brain is the εἶδος or “form” of the future work, produces, when in operation, its like, and begets it out of “matter.” So too the painter, by means of conception, pictures to himself a face, and by imitating this internal conception of the brain carries it out into act; so also the builder constructs his house according to previous conception. The same thing takes place in every other action and artificial production. Thus, what education effects in the brain, viz. art, with its analogue does the coitus of the male endow the uterus, viz. the plastic art; hence many similar or dissimilar fœtuses are produced at the same coitus. For if the productions and first conceptions of art (the mere imitations of nature) are in this way formed in the brain, how much more probable is it that copies (exemplaria) of animal generation and conception should in like manner be produced in the uterus?

And since Nature, all of whose works are wonderful and divine, has devised an organ of this kind, viz. the brain, by the virtue and sensitive faculty of which the conceptions of the rational soul exist, such as the desires and the arts, the first principles and causes of so many and such various works, of which man, by means of the impulsive faculty of the brain, is by imitation the author; why should we not suppose that the same Nature, who in the uterus has constructed an organ no less wonderful, and adapted it by means of a similar structure to perform all that appertains to conception, has destined it for a similar or at least an analogous function, and intended an organ altogether similar for a similar use? For as the skilful artificer accomplishes his works by ingeniously adapting his instruments to each, so that from the substance and shape of these instruments it is easy to judge of their use and application, with no less certainty than we have been taught by Aristotle[392] to recognize the nature of animals from the structure and arrangement of their bodily organs; and as physiognomy instructs us to judge of a man’s disposition and character from the shape of his face and features, what should prevent us from supposing that where the same structure exists there is the same function implanted?

But it is so unfairly ordered that, when customary and familiar matters come to be debated, this very familiarity lessens their importance and our wonder; whilst things of much less moment, because they are novel and rare, appear to us far greater objects of marvel. Whoever has pondered with himself how the brain of the artist, or rather the artist by means of his brain, pictures to the life things which are not present to him, but which he has once seen; also in what manner birds immured in cages recall to mind the spring, and chant exactly the songs they had learned the preceding summer, although meanwhile they had never practised them; again, and this is more strange, how the bird artistically builds its nest, the copy of which it had never seen, and this not from memory or habit, but by means of an imaginative faculty (phantasia), and how the spider weaves its web, without either copy or brain, solely by the help of this imaginative power; whosoever, I say, ponders these things, will not, I think, regard it as absurd or monstrous, that the woman should be impregnated by the conception of a general immaterial “idea,” and become the artificer of generation.

I know well that some censorious persons will laugh at this,--men who believe nothing true but what they think so themselves. Yet this that I do is the practice of philosophers, who, when they cannot clearly comprehend how a thing really is brought to pass, devise some mode for it in accordance with the other works of nature, and as near as possible to what is true. And indeed all those opinions which we now regard as of the greatest weight, were at the beginning mere figments and imaginations, until confirmed by experiments addressed to the senses, and made credible by a knowledge of their positive causes. Aristotle[393] says “that philosophers are in some sort lovers of fables, seeing that fable is made up of marvels.” And indeed men were first led to cultivate philosophy from wondering at what they saw. For my own part, then, when I see nothing left in the uterus after intercourse to which I can ascribe the principle of generation, any more than there is in the brain anything discoverable after sensation and experience, which are the prime sources of art, and when I find the structure of both alike, I have devised this fable. Let learned and ingenious men consider of it, let the supercilious reject it, and those who are peevish and scoffing laugh if they please.

Since, then, nothing can be apprehended by the senses in the uterus after coition, and since it is necessary that there be something to render the female fruitful, and as this is probably not material, it remains for us to take refuge in the notion of a mere conception and of “species without matter” (species sine materiâ), and imagine that the same thing happens here as every one allows takes place in the brain, unless indeed there be some one “whom the gods have moulded of better clay,” and made fit to discover some other efficient cause besides any of those enumerated.

Some philosophers of our time have returned to the old opinion about atoms, and so imagine that this generative contagion, as indeed all others, proceeds from the subtile emanations of the semen of the male, which rise like odorous particles, and gain an entrance into the uterus at the period of intercourse. Others invoke to their aid incorporeal spirits, such as demiurgi, angels, and demons. Others regard it as a process of fermentation. Others devise other theories. I pray, therefore, a place for this conjecture of mine until something certain is established in the matter.

Many observations have been made by me which would easily overthrow the opinions I have mentioned, so easy is it to say what a thing is not rather than what it is; this is not, however, the place to introduce them, although elsewhere it is my intention to do so. On the present occasion I shall only observe, if that which is called by the common name of “contagion,” as arising from the contact of the spermatic fluid in intercourse, and which remains in the woman (without the actual presence of the semen) as the efficient of the future offspring--if, I say, this contagion (whether it be atoms, odorous particles, fermentation, or anything else) is not of the nature of any corporeal substance, it follows of necessity that it is incorporeal. And if on further inquiry it should appear that it is neither spirit nor demon, nor soul, nor any part of the soul, nor anything having a soul, as I believe can be proved by various arguments and experiments, what remains, since I am unable myself to conjecture anything besides, nor has any one imagined aught else even in his dreams, but to confess myself at a stand-still? “For whoever,” says Aristotle,[394] “doubts and wonders, confesses his ignorance; therefore if to escape the imputation of ignorance, ingenious men have turned to philosophy, it is clear they follow their pursuit for the sake of knowledge, and not from any other motive.”

It must not, then, be imputed to me for blame, if, eager for knowledge, and approaching untrodden ground, I have presented aught which at first sight may appear made up or fabulous. For as everything is not to be received at once with an unthinking credulity, so that which has been long and painfully considered must not be straightway rejected, even although it fail to catch the eye of the quick-sighted. Aristotle himself wrote a book, ‘De Mirabilibus audits,’ on hearsay wonders; and elsewhere he says,[395] “We must not only thank those in whose opinions we acquiesce, but those also who have said aught (to the purpose) although superficially. For these bring in something to the common stock, in this, that they exercise and train our habits. For if Timotheus had not existed, we should have lost much music. Yet if Phrynis had not been we should have had no Timotheus. So is it with those who have laid down any truth. For we have received some opinions from certain philosophers, yet were there others to whom these owed their existence.”

Influenced, then, by the example and authority of so great a man, and not to appear resolute only to subvert the doctrines of others, I have preferred proposing a fanciful opinion rather than none at all, playing in this the part of Phrynis to Timotheus, my object being to shake off the sloth of the age we live in, to rouse the intellects of the studious, and, rather than that the diligent investigator of nature should accuse me of indolence, to bid him laugh at my ill-formed and crude notions.

In truth, there is no proposition more magnificent to investigate or more useful to ascertain than this: How are all things formed by an “univocal” agent? How does the like ever generate the like? And this not only in productions of art (for so house builds house, face designs face, and image forms image), but also in things relating to the mind, for mind begets mind, opinion is the source of opinion. Democritus with his atoms, and Eudoxus with his chief good which he placed in pleasure, impregnated Epicurus; the four elements of Empedocles, Aristotle; the doctrines of the ancient Thebans, Pythagoras and Plato; geometry, Euclid. By this same law the son is born like his parents, and virtues which ennoble and vices which degrade a race are sometimes passed on to descendants through a long series of years. Some diseases propagate their kind, as lepra, gout, syphilis, and others. But why do I speak of diseases, when the moles, warts, and cicatrices of the progenitor are sometimes repeated in the descendant after many generations?[396] “Every fourth birth,” says Pliny,[397] “the mark of the origin of the Dacian family is repeated on the arm.” Why may not the thoughts, opinions, and manners now prevalent, many years hence return again, after an intermediate period of neglect? For the divine mind of the Eternal Creator, which is impressed on all things, creates the image of itself in human conceptions.

Having, therefore, overcome some difficulties relating to the subject, I feel a greater desire to enter into it a little more closely, and this with two objects in view--first, that what I have hitherto treated cursorily may seem to carry with it a greater weight of probability; and secondly, to stir up the intellects of the studious to search more deeply into so obscure a subject.

To illustrate the matter, let A stand for the fecundated egg (the “matter” that is of the future chick), which is alterable or convertible into the chick, and is in fact the chicken in posse. Let B be that which fecundates the egg, and thus distinguishes it from an unfruitful egg, i. e. the “efficient cause” of the chick, or that which puts the egg in motion, and converts it into a chick. And let C be the chick, or “final cause,” for the sake of which both the egg and that which fecundates the egg exist, the actual chick, namely, or “reason” why the chick is.

Now we take for granted, as demonstrated by Aristotle,[398] that every prime mover is “combined with” that which is moved by it. And these things are more particularly said by him to be “together” which are generated or produced at the same moment of time: thus that which moves and that which is moved are actually together, and where one is there the other is also; for it is evident that when the effect is present the cause must be so too.

Whenever, then, A (i. e. the fecundated egg) is actually in being, B (i. e. the internal moving and “efficient” or fecundating cause) is also actually in being. But when B is actually in being, C also (i. e. the immaterial “form” of the chick) must, at least in some sort, be existing too. For B is the internal efficient cause of the chick, that, namely, which alters A (the egg) into C (the “reason” why the chick is). Since, then, everything which moves coexists with that which is moved by it, and every cause with its effect, it follows that C coexists with B; for the “final cause,” both in nature and art, is primary to all other causes, since it moves, and is not itself moved; but the “efficient” moves, because it is impelled by the “final cause.” There inheres, in some way or other, in every “efficient cause” a ratio finis (a final cause), and by this the efficient, co-operating with Providence, is moved.

The authority of Aristotle is clearly on my side: “That,” he says,[399] “appears to hold the chief place among natural causes which we signify under this expression, ‘cujus gratiâ’--for whose sake. For this is the ‘reason;’ but the ‘reason’ is the chief thing, as well in artificial as in natural subjects. For when a physician explains what health is, either by definition or description, or a workman a house, he is accustomed to give the reasons and causes of what he does, and adds why he does it; although that cause, ‘cujus gratiâ,’ and the reason ‘for the sake of the good and fair,’ are joined rather to the works of nature than to those of art.”

“The end,” he elsewhere says,[400] “is this ‘cujus gratiâ’ (for whose sake), as health is the thing for the sake of which we walk. For why does a man walk? We answer, for the sake of his health; and when we have thus said, we think we have given a ‘cause;’ and whatever else is further interposed, by means of another agent, is done for the sake of this end, as dieting, or purging, or drugs, or instruments, are all for the sake of health; for all these are for the sake of the end.” Again, “It is our business always to seek the primary cause of everything. For instance, a man builds a house because he is a builder, but he is a builder by reason of the art of building; this then (the art) is a prior cause; and so in all things.” Hence it is that he asserts[401] “that the cause which first moves, and in which the ‘reason’ and ‘form’ lie, is greater and more divine than the ‘material cause.’”

In all natural generation, therefore, both the “matter” out of which and the “efficient cause” by which (namely, A, the thing which is moved, and B, the thing moving) are alike for the sake of the animal begotten or to be begotten; for that which moves and is not itself moved, viz. C, is in (inest) both. For both those (viz. A and B) are at the same time capable of motion, and are moreover moved, viz. the thing fecundating, B, (which both moves and is moved) and the thing fecundated, A, the “matter,” viz. or ovum, which is moved and changed only. Wherefore if no moveable thing is actually moved, unless the thing which moves is present, so neither will “matter” be moved, nor the “efficient” effect anything, unless the first moving cause be in some way present; and this is the “form” or “species” which is without matter, and is the prime cause. “For the efficient and generating,” according to Aristotle,[402] “in so far as they are so, belong to that which is effected and generated.” The following syllogism, therefore, may be framed out of these first and necessary predicates:

Whenever B is actually in existence, C also is actually in existence (i. e. moving in some way).

Whenever A is actually in existence, B is also in actual existence.

Therefore whenever A is in actual existence, C is also in actual existence.

Natural and artificial generation take place after the same manner.[403] Both are instituted for the sake of something further, and by a kind of providence both direct themselves to a proposed end;--both too are first moved by some “form” conceived without matter, and are the products of this conception. The brain is the organ of one kind of conception (for in the soul, the organ of which is the brain, art, without the intervention of matter, is the “reason” or first cause of the work), the uterus or ovum of the other.

The “conception,” therefore, of the uterus or the ovum resembles, at least in some sort, the conception of the brain itself, and in a similar way does the “end” inhere in both. For the “species” or “form” of the chick is in the uterus or ovum without the intervention of matter, just as the “reason” of his work is in the artist, e. g. the “reason” of the house in the brain of the builder.

But since the phrase “to be in” is perhaps equivocal, and things are said to be coexistent in various senses, I affirm, further, and say, that the “species” and immaterial “form” of the future chick are, in some sort, the cause of the impregnation or fecundation of the uterus, because after intercourse no corporeal substance can be found within that organ.

But how this immaterial cause, this first principle, exists alike in the uterus and brain, or how the conceptions of the brain and uterus, answering to art and nature, resemble or differ from each other, and in what way the thing which fecundates (viz. the internal efficient cause whereby the animal is generated) exists alike in the male and his semen and in the woman and her uterus--in the egg also, the mixed work of both sexes--and wherein their differences consist, I shall subsequently attempt to explain when I treat generally of the generation of animals (as well of those creatures which are produced by metamorphosis, viz. insects, as of spontaneously generated beings, in whose ova or “primordia,” as in all other seeds, the “species” or immaterial “form” plainly dwells, the moving principle, as it were, of those things which are to be generated), and when I speak of the soul and its affections, and how art, memory, and experience are to be regarded as the conceptions of the brain alone.

THE ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION

OF THE BODY OF

THOMAS PARR,

WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO YEARS;

MADE BY

WILLIAM HARVEY,

OTHERS OF THE KING’S PHYSICIANS BEING PRESENT,

ON THE 16TH OF NOVEMBER, THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTHDAY

OF HER SERENE HIGHNESS

HENRIETTA MARIA, QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN, FRANCE AND IRELAND.

[This account first appeared in the work of Dr. Bett, entitled: “De Ortu et Natura Sanguinis,” 8vo. London, 1669, the MS. having been presented to Bett by Mr. Michael Harvey, nephew of the author, with whom Bett informs us he was on terms of intimacy.--ED.]

ANATOMICAL EXAMINATION OF THE BODY OF THOMAS PARR.

Thomas Parr, a poor countryman, born near Winnington, in the county of Salop, died on the 14th of November, in the year of grace 1635, after having lived one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months, and survived nine princes. This poor man, having been visited by the illustrious Earl of Arundel when he chanced to have business in these parts, (his lordship being moved to the visit by the fame of a thing so incredible,) was brought by him from the country to London; and, having been most kindly treated by the earl both on the journey and during a residence in his own house, was presented as a remarkable sight to his Majesty the King.

Having made an examination of the body of this aged individual, by command of his Majesty, several of whose principal physicians were present, the following particulars were noted:

The body was muscular, the chest hairy, and the hair on the fore-arms still black; the legs, however, were without hair, and smooth.

The organs of generation were healthy, the penis neither retracted nor extenuated, nor the scrotum filled with any serous infiltration, as happens so commonly among the decrepid; the testes, too, were sound and large; so that it seemed not improbable that the common report was true, viz. that he did public penance under a conviction for incontinence, after he had passed his hundredth year; and his wife, whom he had married as a widow in his hundred-and-twentieth year, did not deny that he had intercourse with her after the manner of other husbands with their wives, nor until about twelve years back had he ceased to embrace her frequently.

The chest was broad and ample; the lungs, nowise fungous, adhered, especially on the right side, by fibrous bands to the ribs. They were much loaded with blood, as we find them in cases of peripneumony, so that until the blood was squeezed out they looked rather blackish. Shortly before his death I had observed that the face was livid, and he suffered from difficult breathing and orthopnœa. This was the reason why the axillæ and chest continued to retain their heat long after his death: this and other signs that present themselves in cases of death from suffocation were observed in the body.

We judged, indeed, that he had died suffocated, through inability to breathe, and this view was confirmed by all the physicians present, and reported to the King. When the blood was expressed, and the lungs were wiped, their substance was beheld of a white and almost milky hue.

The heart was large, and thick, and fibrous, and contained a considerable quantity of adhering fat, both in its circumference and over its septum. The blood in the heart, of a black colour, was dilute, and scarcely coagulated; in the right ventricle alone some small clots were discovered.

In raising the sternum, the cartilages of the ribs were not found harder or converted into bone in any greater degree than they are in ordinary men; on the contrary, they were soft and flexible.

The intestines were perfectly sound, fleshy, and strong, and so was the stomach: the small intestines presented several constrictions, like rings, and were muscular. Whence it came that, by day or night, observing no rules or regular times for eating, he was ready to discuss any kind of eatable that was at hand; his ordinary diet consisting of sub-rancid cheese, and milk in every form, coarse and hard bread, and small drink, generally sour whey. On this sorry fare, but living in his home, free from care, did this poor man attain to such length of days. He even ate something about midnight shortly before his death.

The kidneys were bedded in fat, and in themselves sufficiently healthy; on their anterior aspects, however, they contained several small watery abscesses or serous collections, one of which, the size of a hen’s egg, containing a yellow fluid in a proper cyst, had made a rounded depression in the substance of the kidney. To this some were disposed to ascribe the suppression of urine under which the old man had laboured shortly before his death; whilst others, and with greater show of likelihood, ascribed it to the great regurgitation of serum upon the lungs.

There was no appearance of stone either in the kidneys or bladder.

The mesentery was loaded with fat, and the colon, with the omentum, which was likewise fat, was attached to the liver, near the fundus of the gall-bladder; in like manner the colon was adherent from this point posteriorly with the peritoneum.

The viscera were healthy; they only looked somewhat white externally, as they would have done had they been parboiled; internally they were (like the blood,) of the colour of dark gore.

The spleen was very small, scarcely equalling one of the kidneys in size.

All the internal parts, in a word, appeared so healthy, that had nothing happened to interfere with the old man’s habits of life, he might perhaps have escaped paying the debt due to nature for some little time longer.

The cause of death seemed fairly referrible to a sudden change in the non-naturals, the chief mischief being connected with the change of air, which through the whole course of life had been inhaled of perfect purity,--light, cool, and mobile, whereby the præcordia and lungs were more freely ventilated and cooled; but in this great advantage, in this grand cherisher of life this city is especially destitute; a city whose grand characteristic is an immense concourse of men and animals, and where ditches abound, and filth and offal lie scattered about, to say nothing of the smoke engendered by the general use of sulphureous coal as fuel, whereby the air is at all times rendered heavy, but much more so in the autumn than at any other season. Such an atmosphere could not have been found otherwise than insalubrious to one coming from the open, sunny and healthy region of Salop; it must have been especially so to one already aged and infirm.

And then for one hitherto used to live on food unvaried in kind, and very simple in its nature, to be set at a table loaded with variety of viands, and tempted not only to eat more than wont, but to partake of strong drink, it must needs fall out that the functions of all the natural organs would become deranged. Whence the stomach at length failing, and the excretions long retained, the work of concoction proceeding languidly, the liver getting loaded, the blood stagnating in the veins, the spirits frozen, the heart, the source of life, oppressed, the lungs infarcted, and made impervious to the ambient air, the general habit rendered more compact, so that it could no longer exhale or perspire--no wonder that the soul, little content with such a prison, took its flight.

The brain was healthy, very firm and hard to the touch; hence, shortly before his death, although he had been blind for twenty years, he heard extremely well, understood all that was said to him, answered immediately to questions, and had perfect apprehension of any matter in hand; he was also accustomed to walk about, slightly supported between two persons. His memory, however, was greatly impaired, so that he scarcely recollected anything of what had happened to him when he was a young man, nothing of public incidents, or of the kings or nobles who had made a figure, or of the wars or troubles of his earlier life, or of the manners of society, or of the prices of things--in a word, of any of the ordinary incidents which men are wont to retain in their memories. He only recollected the events of the last few years. Nevertheless, he was accustomed, even in his hundred and thirtieth year, to engage lustily in every kind of agricultural labour, whereby he earned his bread, and he had even then the strength required to thrash the corn.

LETTERS.

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