The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher eBook

Formerly, before women came to the marriage-bed, they were first searched by the mid-wife, and those only which she allowed of as fruitful were admitted.  I hope, therefore, it will not be amiss to show you how they may prove themselves and turn barren ground into fruitful soil.  Barrenness is a deprivation of the life and power which ought to be in the seed to procreate and propagate; for which end men and women were made.  Causes of barrenness may be over much cold or heat, drying up the seed and corrupting it, which extinguishes the life of the seed, making it waterish and unfit for generation.  It may be caused also, by the not flowing or over-flowing of the courses by swellings, ulcers, and inflammation of the womb, by an excrescence of flesh growing about the mouth of the matrix, by the mouth of the matrix being turned up to the back or side by the fatness of the body, whereby the mouth of the matrix is closed up, being pressed with the omentum or caul, and the matter of the seed is turned to fat; if she be a lean and dry body, and though she do conceive, yet the fruit of her body will wither before it come to perfection, for want of nourishment.  One main cause of barrenness is attributed to want of a convenient moderating quality, which the woman ought to have with the man; as, if he be hot, she must be cold; if he be dry, she must be moist; as, if they be both dry or both moist of constitution, they cannot propagate; and yet, simply considering of themselves, they are not barren, for she who was before as the barren fig-tree being joined to an apt constitution becomes as the fruitful vine.  And that a man and woman, being every way of like constitution, cannot create, I will bring nature itself for a testimony, who hath made man of a better constitution than woman, that the quality of the one, may moderate the quality of the other.

SIGNS OF BARRENNESS.

If barrenness proceeds from overmuch heat, if she is a dry body, subject to anger, has black hair, quick pulse, and her purgations flow but little, and that with pain, she loves to play in the courts of Venus.  But if it comes by cold, then the signs are contrary to the above mentioned.  If through the evil quality of the womb, make a suffumigation of red styrax, myrrh, cassia-wood, nutmeg, and cinnamon; and let her receive the fumes into her womb, covering her very close; and if the odour so received passes through the body to the mouth and nostrils, she is fruitful.  But if she feels not the fumes in her mouth and nostrils, it argues barrenness one of these ways—­that the spirit of the seed is either extinguished through cold, or dissipated through heat.  If any woman be suspected to be unfruitful, cast natural brimstone, such as is digged out of mines, into her urine, and if worms breed therein, she is not barren.

PROGNOSTICS.

Barrenness makes women look young, because they are free from those pains and sorrows which other women are accustomed to.  Yet they have not the full perfection of health which other women enjoy, because they are not rightly purged of the menstruous blood and superfluous seed, which are the principal cause of most uterine diseases.