Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 1 of 2).djvu/615

 be said that as they avow the semen to be a derivative from all parts else, we believe the semen to be disposed of itself to form every part ; and whilst they call it a colliqua- ment, we are rather inclined to regard it as an excrement" (he had, however, said shortly before that he entitled excrement the remains of the nourishment, and colliquament that which is secreted from the growth by a preternatural resolution) ; " for that which arrives last, and is the excrement of what is final, is in all probability of the same nature ; in the same way as painters have very commonly some remains of colours, which are identical with those they have applied upon their canvass ; but anything that is consuming and melting away is corrupt and degenerate. Another argument that the seminal fluid is not a colliquament, but an excrement, is this : that animals of larger growth are less prolific, smaller creatures more fruitful. Now there must be a larger quantity of colliquament in larger than in smaller animals, but less excrement ; for as there must be a large consumption of nourishment in a large body, so must there be a small production of excrement. Farther, there is no place provided by nature for receiving and storing colliquament ; it flows off by the way that is most open to it ; but there are receptacles for all the natural excrements the bowels for the dry excrements, the bladder for the moist ; the stomach for matters useful ; the genital organs, the uterus, the mammse for seminal matter in which several places they col- lect and run together." After this he goes on by a variety of arguments to prove that the seminal matter from which the foetus is formed is the same as that which is prepared for the nutrition of the parts at large. As if, should one require some pigment from a painter, he certainly would not go to scrape off what he had already laid on his canvass, but would sup- ply the demand from his store, or from what he had over from his work, which was still of the same nature as that which he might have taken away from his picture. So and in like manner the excrement of the ultimate nutriment, or the re- mainder of the gluten and dew, is carried to the genital organs and there deposited ; and this view is most accordant with the production of eggs by the hen.

The medical writers, too, who hold all the parts to be origi- nally formed from the spermatic fluid, and consequently speak