(2) The arteries are two on each side which proceed from the back branches of the great artery of the mother, and the vital blood is carried by those to the child being ready concocted by the mother.

(3) A nervous or sinewy production is led from the bottom of the bladder of the infant to the navel, and this is called urachos, and its use is, to convey the urine of the infant from the bladder to the alantois.  Anatomists do very much vary in their opinion concerning this, some denying any such thing to be in the delivery of the woman, and others on the contrary affirming it; but experience has testified there is such a thing, for Bartholomew Carbrolius, the ordinary doctor of anatomy to the College of Physicians at Montpellier in France, records the history of a maid, whose water being a long time stopped, at last issued out through the navel.  And Johannes Fernelius speaks of the same thing that happened to a man of thirty years of age, who having a stoppage at the neck of the bladder, his urine issued out of his navel for many months together, and that without any prejudice at all to his health, which he ascribes to the ill lying of his navel, whereby the urachos was not well dried.  And Volchier Coitas quotes such another instance in a maid of thirty-four at Nuremburg in Germany.  These instances, though they happen but seldom, are sufficient to prove that there is such a thing as anurachos in men.

These four vessels before mentioned, viz., one vein, two arteries and the urachos, join near the navel, and are united by a skin which they have from the chorion and so become like a gut or rope, and are altogether void of sensibility, and this is that which women call the navel-string.  The vessels are thus joined together, that so they may neither be broken, severed nor entangled; and when the infant is born are of no use save only to make up the ligament which stops the hole of the navel and for some other physical use, etc.

Of the Secundine or After-birth.

Setting aside the name given to this by the Greeks and Latins, it is called in English by the name of secundine, after-birth or after-burden; which are held to be four in number.

(1) The first is called placenta, because it resembles the form of a cake, and is knit both to the navel and chorion, and makes up the greatest part of the secundine or after-birth.  The flesh of it is like that of the melt or spleen, soft, red and tending something to blackness, and hath many small veins and arteries in it:  and certainly the chief use of it is, for containing the child in the womb.

(2) The second is the chorion.  This skin and that called the amnios, involve the child round, both above and underneath, and on both sides, which the alantois does not.  This skin is that which is most commonly called the secundine, as it is thick and white garnished with many small veins and arteries, ending in the placenta before named, being very light and slippery.  Its use is, not only to cover the child round about, but also to receive, and safely bind up the roots of the veins and arteries or navel vessels before described.