The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher | Page 3

in the wane, in Libra or Aquaries. Advicenne says,
that when the menses are spent and the womb cleansed, which is
commonly in five or seven days at most, if a man lie with his wife from
the first day she is purged to the fifth, she will conceive a male; but
from the fifth to the eighth a female; and from the eighth to the twelfth
a male again: but after that perhaps neither distinctly, but both in an
hermaphrodite. In a word, they that would be happy in the fruits of
their labour, must observe to use copulation in due distance of time, not
too often nor too seldom, for both are alike hurtful; and to use it
immoderately weakens and wastes the spirits and spoils the seed. And
this much for the first particular.

The second is to let the reader know how the child is formed in the
womb, what accidents it is liable to there, and how nourished and
brought forth. There are various opinions concerning this matter;
therefore, I shall show what the learned say about it.
Man consists of an egg, which is impregnated in the testicles of the
woman, by the more subtle parts of the man's seed; but the forming
faculty and virtue in the seed is a divine gift, it being abundantly
imbued with vital spirit, which gives sap and form to the embryo, so
that all parts and bulk of the body, which is made up in a few months
and gradually formed into the likely figure of a man, do consist in, and
are adumbrated thereby (most sublimely expressed, Psalm cxxxix.: "I
will praise Thee, O Lord, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.")
Physicians have remarked four different times at which a man is framed
and perfected in the womb; the first after coition, being perfectly
formed in the week if no flux happens, which sometimes falls out
through the slipperiness of the head of the matrix, that slips over like a
rosebud that opens suddenly. The second time of forming is assigned
when nature makes manifest mutation in the conception, so that all the
substance seems congealed, flesh and blood, and happens twelve or
fourteen days after copulation. And though this fleshy mass abounds
with inflamed blood, yet it remains undistinguishable, without form,
and may be called an embryo, and compared to seed sown in the
ground, which, through heat and moisture, grows by degrees to a
perfect form in plant or grain. The third time assigned to make up this
fabric is when the principal parts show themselves plain; as the heart,
whence proceed the arteries, the brain, from which the nerves, like
small threads, run through the whole body; and the liver, which divides
the chyle from the blood, brought to it by the vena porta. The two first
are fountains of life, that nourish every part of the body, in framing
which the faculty of the womb is bruised, from the conception of the
eighth day of the first month. The fourth, and last, about the thirtieth
day, the outward parts are seen nicely wrought, distinguished by joints,
from which time it is no longer an embryo, but a perfect child.
Most males are perfect by the thirtieth day, but females seldom before

the forty-second or forty-fifth day, because the heat of the womb is
greater in producing the male than the female. And, for the same reason,
a woman going with a male child quickens in three months, but going
with a female, rarely under four, at which time its hair and nails come
forth, and the child begins to stir, kick and move in the womb, and then
the woman is troubled with a loathing for meat and a greedy longing
for things contrary to nutriment, as coals, rubbish, chalk, etc., which
desire often occasions abortion and miscarriage. Some women have
been so extravagant as to long for hob nails, leather, horse-flesh, man's
flesh, and other unnatural as well as unwholesome food, for want of
which thing they have either miscarried or the child has continued dead
in the womb for many days, to the imminent hazard of their lives. But I
shall now proceed to show by what means the child is maintained in the
womb, and what posture it there remains in.
The learned Hippocrates affirms that the child, as he is placed in the
womb, has his hands on his knees, and his head bent to his feet, so that
he lies round together, his hands upon his knees and his face between
them, so that each eye touches each thumb, and his nose betwixt his
knees. And of the same opinion in this matter was Bartholinus.
Columbus is of opinion that the figure of the child in the womb