Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/57

 ON CONCEPTION.

��FABRICIUS has indeed recounted many wonderful things 011 the subject of parturition ; for my own part, I think there is more to admire and marvel at in conception. It is a matter, in truth, full of obscurity; yet will I venture to put forth a few things rather though as questions proposed for 'solution that I may not appear to subvert other men's opinions only, without bringing forward anything of my own. Yet what I shall state I wish not to be taken as if I thought it a voice from an oracle, or desired to gain the assent of others by violence ; I claim, how- ever, that liberty which I willingly yield to others, the permis- sion, viz. in subjects of difficulty to put forward as true such things as appear to be probable until proved to be manifestly false.

It is to the uterus that the business of conception is chiefly intrusted : without this structure and its functions conception would be looked for in vain. But since it is certain that the semen of the male does not so much as reach the cavity of the uterus, much less continue long there, and that it carries with it a fecundating power by a kind of contagious property, (not because it is then and there in actual contact, or operates, but because it previously has been in contact) ; the woman, after contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to receive in- fluence, and to become fecundated without the co-operation of any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched by the magnet is endowed with its powers and can attract other iron to itself. When this virtue is once received the woman exercises a plastic power of generation, and produces a being after her own image ; not otherwise than the plant, which we see endowed with the forces of both sexes.

�� �