Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/24

 542 ON PARTURITION.

of the male become visible, and in the female the horns of the uterus appear. In truth, it is most marvellous to see what an enormous quantity of semen is contained in full-grown moles and mice at those times, whilst at others no semen can be seen, and the testicles are shrunk and retracted. So also when the reproductive faculty ceases in the female, the uterus is found with difficulty, and it is scarcely possible to distinguish the sexes. The uterus, especially in the woman, varies extraordinarily as it is fecundated or not, both in constitution and in the results of that constitution I mean in position, size, form, colour, thickness, hardness, and density. In the girl, before the age of puberty, the breasts are no larger than those of the boy, and the uterus is a small, white, membranous organ, des- titute of vessels, and not larger than the top of the thumb, or a large bean. In like manner in old women, as the breasts are collapsed, so is the uterus shrunken, flaccid, withered, pale, and void of vessels and blood. I attribute the suppression of the catamenia in elderly women to this cause; in them the menstruous fluid either escapes as hemorrhoidal flux, or is pre- maturely stopped, to the injury of the health. For when the uterus becomes cold and almost lifeless, and all its vessels are obliterated, the superfluous blood boils up, and either falls back and stagnates, or else is diverted into the neighbouring veins. On the contrary, in those pale virgins who labour under chronic maladies, and in whom the uterus is small and the catamenia stagnate, " by coition," says Aristotle, 1 " the excrementitious menstrual fluid is drawn downwards, for the heated uterus attracts the humours, and the passages are opened." In this way their maladies are greatly lessened, seeing that want of action on the part of the uterus exposes the body to various ills. For the uterus is a most important organ, and brings the whole body to sympathize with it. No one of the least expe- rience can be ignorant what grievous symptoms arise when the uterus either rises up or falls down, or is in any way put out of place, or is seized with spasm how dreadful, then, are the mental aberrations, the delirium, the melancholy, the paroxysms of frenzy, as if the affected person were under the dominion of spells, and all arising from unnatural states of the uterus. How

1 De Gen. Anim. lib. iii, cap. 1.

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