Page:The Works of William Harvey (part 2 of 2).djvu/59

 ON CONCEPTION. 577

solicitations of the male animal ; it is itself, however, a purely natural result, just as is the ripening of the fruit in trees. What these changes are I will now recount, as I have found them by observation.

The uterus first appears more thick and fleshy; then its inner surface, the future residence, that is, of the " concep- tion/' becomes softer, and resembles in smoothness and deli- cacy the ventricles of the brain ; this I have already described in the deer and other cloven-footed tribes. But in the dog, cat, and other multiparous and digitated animals, the horns of the uterus clearly corresponding to the round tubes of the woman [Fallopian tubes], the appendices of the intestines in birds, or the ureters in man exhibit little protuberances at cer- tain intervals, which swell up and become extremely soft; these, after intercourse, appear to open themselves, (as I have ob- served in deer ;) from them the first white fluid transudes into the uterus, and out of this the " conception/' or ovum, is formed. In this way the uterus, by means of the male, (like fruit by the summer's heat,) is brought to the highest pitch of maturity, and becomes impregnated.

But since there are no manifest signs of conception before the uterus begins to relax, and the white fluid or slender threads (like the spider's web) constituting the "primordium" of the future " conception/' or ovum, shows itself; and since the substance of the uterus, when ready to conceive, is very like the structure of the brain, why should we not suppose that the function of both is similar, and that there is excited by coitus within the uterus a something identical with, or at least analo- gous to, an "imagination" (phantasma) or a "desire" (appetitus) in the brain, whence comes the generation or procreation of the ovum ? For the functions of both are termed " conceptions," and both, although the primary sources of every action through- out the body, are immaterial, the one of natural or organic, the other of animal actions; the one (viz. the uterus) the first cause and beginning of every action which conduces to the generation of the animal, the other (viz. the brain) of every action done for its preservation. And just as a " desire" arises from a conception of the brain, and this conception springs from some external object of desire, so also from the male, as being the more perfect animal, and, as it were, the most

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