Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/583

 watery, sluggish albuminous matter, and now presents itself as a long-shaped pudding full of fluid. It adheres by its external glutinous matter to the containing walls of the uterus, but so that it is still easily separated from these ; for if it be taken hold of cautiously in the strait of the uterus, where it is con- stricted in its course, it can be drawn entire out of either horn.

The conception arrived at this stage removed entire, presents itself with the figure of a wallet or double pudding ; externally, it is covered with a purulent-looking matter ; internally, it is smooth, and contains in its cavity a viscid fluid not unlike the thinner white of egg.

This is the conception of the hind and doe in its first stage. And since it has now the nature and state of an egg, and the definition given by Aristotle 1 of an egg is applicable to it, namely : ( ' A body from one part of which an animal is produced, the remainder serving as nourishment to that which is engen- dered ;" and farther, as it is the primordium of the future foetus, it is therefore called the ovum, or egg of the animal, in con- formity with that passage of the philosopher where he says : 2 (( Those animals which engender internally, have a certain ovi- form body produced after the first conception. For a humour is included within a delicate membrane, such as that which you find under the shell in the egg of the hen ; wherefore the blightings of conceptions that are apt to take place about this period are called fluxes." This conception, therefore, as we have already said of the egg, is the true sperma or seed, com- prising the virtue of both sexes in itself, and is analogous to the seed of the vegetable. So that Aristotle, describing the first conception of women, says, 3 that it is "covered with a mem- brane like an egg from which the shell has been removed;" such as Hippocrates describes as having been passed by the female pipe-player. And I have myself frequently seen such ova, of the size of pigeons' eggs, and containing no foetus, dis- charged by women about the second month after conception ; when the ovum was of the size of a pheasant's or hen's egg, the embryo could be made out, the size of the little finger nail, .floating within it. But the membrane surrounding the con- ception has not yet acquired any annexed placenta ; neither is

1 Hist. Anim. lib. i, cap. 5 ; et De Gen. Anhn. lib. ii, cap. 9.

- De Gen. Anim. lib. Hi, cap. 9. 3 Hist. Anim. lib. vii. cap. 7.