The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher eBook

of quality that assisted, affirming that she had been the mother of nineteen children, and that divers of them had been born and lived at seven months, though within the seventh month.  For in such cases, the revolution of the month ought to be observed, which perfects itself in four bare weeks, or somewhat less than twenty-eight days; in which space of the revolution, the blood being agitated by the force of the moon, the courses of women flow from them; which being spent, and the matrix cleansed from the menstruous blood which happens on the fourth day, then, if a man on the seventh day lie with his wife, the copulation is most natural, and then the conception is best:  and the child thus begotten may be born in the seventh month and prove very healthful.  So that on this report, the supposed father was pronounced innocent; the proof that he was 100 miles distant all that month in which the child was begotten; as for the mother she strongly denied that she knew the father, being forced in the dark; and so, through fear and surprise, was left in ignorance.”

As for coition, it ought not to be used unless the parties be in health, lest it turn to the disadvantage of the children so begotten, creating in them, through the abundance of ill humours, divers languishing diseases.  Wherefore, health is no better discerned than by the genitals of the man; for which reasons midwives, and other skilful women, were formerly wont to see the testicles of children, thereby to conjecture their temperature and state of body; and young men may know thereby the signs and symptoms of death; for if the cases of the testicles be loose and feeble, which are the proofs of life, are fallen, but if the secret parts are wrinkled and raised up, it is a sign that all is well, but that the event may exactly answer the prediction, it is necessary to consider what part of the body the disease possesseth; for if it chance to be the upper part that is afflicted, as the head or stomach, then it will not so then appear by the members, which are unconnected with such grievances; but the lower part of the body exactly sympathising with them, their liveliness, on the contrary, makes it apparent; for nature’s force, and the spirits that have their intercourse, first manifest themselves therein; which occasions midwives to feel the genitals of children, to know in what part the gulf is residing, and whether life or death be portended thereby, the symptoms being strongly communicated to the vessels, that have their intercourse with the principal seat of life.

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CHAPTER IX

     Of the Green-Sickness in Virgins, with its causes, signs and
     cures; together with the chief occasions of Barrenness in Women,
     and the Means to remove the Cause, and render them fruitful.