Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/39

 THE HUMOURS. 557

secundines) : and by these are implied not only the membranes, but everything which comes away from the uterus at the last stage of parturition, or at least not long after it, viz. the humours, membranes, fleshy substance, and umbilical vessels.

��Of the Humours.

The doctrines inculcated on the subject of the humours, and which, as being entertained by the ancients, Fabricius regards as certain truths requiring no further proof, are altogether incon- sistent and false ; the doctrines, I mean, that the fluid within the amnion, wherein the foetus swims, consists of sweat ; and that within the chorion of urine. For both these humours are found in the " conception" before any trace of the foetus is visible ; added to which, the fluid they call urine can be seen before that which they regard as sweat. In truth, these hu- mours, especially the outer one, may be observed in unfruitful conceptions where nothing like a foetus is discoverable.

"Women sometimes expel conceptions of this kind, ana- logous to the subventaneous or wind egg. Aristotle l says they are called "fluxes;" among ourselves they are termed " false conceptions," or " slips." An ovum of this kind was aborted in the case of Hippocrates's pipe-player. " In all creatures," we are informed on the authority of Aristotle, 3 " which breed another within themselves, immediately on con- ception an egg-like body is formed ; that is to say, a body in which a fluid is contained within a delicate membrane just like an egg with the shell removed." The humour in the chorion, which Fabricius and other physicians consider to be urine, Aristotle seems to have regarded as the seminal fluid (sper- matis sive geniturse liquor) . He says, 3 " when the semen is received into the uterus, after a certain time it becomes sur- rounded by a membrane, and if expulsion takes place before the foetus is formed, it has the appearance of an egg with the shell removed and covered by its membrane : this mem-

��1 De Gen. Anim. lib. iii, cap. 9. * Ibid.

3 Hist. Anim. lib. vii, cap. 7.

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