第89章

There are certain women who conceive with difficulty, but if they do conceive, bring the child to maturity; while others again conceive readily, but are unable to bring the child to birth.

Furthermore, some men and some women produce female offspring and some male, as for instance in the story of Hercules, who among all his two and seventy children is said to have begotten but one girl.

Those women who are unable to conceive, save with the help of medical treatment or some other adventitious circumstance, are as a general rule apt to bear female children rather than male.

It is a common thing with men to be at first sexually competent and afterwards impotent, and then again to revert to their former powers.

From deformed parents come deformed children, lame from lame and blind from blind, and, speaking generally, children often inherit anything that is peculiar in their parents and are born with similar marks, such as pimples or scars. Such things have been known to be handed down through three generations; for instance, a certain man had a mark on his arm which his son did not possess, but his grandson had it in the same spot though not very distinct.

Such cases, however, are few; for the children of cripples are mostly sound, and there is no hard and fast rule regarding them. While children mostly resemble their parents or their ancestors, it sometimes happens that no such resemblance is to be traced. But parents may pass on resemblance after several generations, as in the case of the woman in Elis, who committed adultery with a negro; in this case it was not the woman's own daughter but the daughter's child that was a blackamoor.

As a rule the daughters have a tendency to take after the mother, and the boys after the father; but sometimes it is the other way, the boys taking after the mother and the girls after the father. And they may resemble both parents in particular features.

There have been known cases of twins that had no resemblance to one another, but they are alike as a general rule. There was once upon a time a woman who had intercourse with her husband a week after giving birth to a child and she conceived and bore a second child as like the first as any twin. Some women have a tendency to produce children that take after themselves, and others children that take after the husband; and this latter case is like that of the celebrated mare in Pharsalus, that got the name of the Honest Wife.

7In the emission of sperm there is a preliminary discharge of air, and the outflow is manifestly caused by a blast of air; for nothing is cast to a distance save by pneumatic pressure. After the seed reaches the womb and remains there for a while, a membrane forms around it; for when it happens to escape before it is distinctly formed, it looks like an egg enveloped in its membrane after removal of the eggshell; and the membrane is full of veins.

All animals whatsoever, whether they fly or swim or walk upon dry land, whether they bring forth their young alive or in the egg, develop in the same way: save only that some have the navel attached to the womb, namely the viviparous animals, and some have it attached to the egg, and some to both parts alike, as in a certain sort of fishes. And in some cases membranous envelopes surround the egg, and in other cases the chorion surrounds it. And first of all the animal develops within the innermost envelope, and then another membrane appears around the former one, which latter is for the most part attached to the womb, but is in part separated from it and contains fluid. In between is a watery or sanguineous fluid, which the women folk call the forewaters.

8All animals, or all such as have a navel, grow by the navel. And the navel is attached to the cotyledon in all such as possess cotyledons, and to the womb itself by a vein in all such as have the womb smooth. And as regards their shape within the womb, the four-footed animals all lie stretched out, and the footless animals lie on their sides, as for instance fishes; but two-legged animals lie in a bent position, as for instance birds; and human embryos lie bent, with nose between the knees and eyes upon the knees, and the ears free at the sides.

All animals alike have the head upwards to begin with; but as they grow and approach the term of egress from the womb they turn downwards, and birth in the natural course of things takes place in all animals head foremost; but in abnormal cases it may take place in a bent position, or feet foremost.

The young of quadrupeds when they are near their full time contain excrements, both liquid and in the form of solid lumps, the latter in the lower part of the bowel and the urine in the bladder.

In those animals that have cotyledons in the womb the cotyledons grow less as the embryo grows bigger, and at length they disappear altogether. The navel-string is a sheath wrapped about blood-vessels which have their origin in the womb, from the cotyledons in those animals which possess them and from a blood-vessel in those which do not. In the larger animals, such as the embryos of oxen, the vessels are four in number, and in smaller animals two; in the very little ones, such as fowls, one vessel only.

Of the four vessels that run into the embryo, two pass through the liver where the so-called gates or 'portae' are, running in the direction of the great vein, and the other two run in the direction of the aorta towards the point where it divides and becomes two vessels instead of one. Around each pair of blood-vessels are membranes, and surrounding these membranes is the navel-string itself, after the manner of a sheath. And as the embryo grows, the veins themselves tend more and more to dwindle in size. And also as the embryo matures it comes down into the hollow of the womb and is observed to move here, and sometimes rolls over in the vicinity of the groin.