Inaugural Medical Dissertation on the Procreation of Male Offspring

...[venerable] teacher. See his Elements of Anthropology original: "Elementa Anthropologiæ". Truly, these small eggs original: "ovula." At this time, physicians were beginning to understand the role of the ovaries in reproduction. are contained only in the testes In 18th-century anatomy, the ovaries were often called the "female testes." or ovaries. For that new "ovary of Naboth" Martin Naboth (1675–1721), a German physician. He misidentified the mucous cysts in the cervix (now called Nabothian cysts) as the true eggs of the female., I can be induced by no reason to believe it is a true ovary, since the castration of animals performed in the hypogastrium The lower abdomen. persuades me otherwise; there, while the substance of the uterus remains intact, the ovaries are removed, and being castrated in this manner, they become perfectly and truly sterile, as the Illustrious Wedel teaches in the cited place Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645–1721), a highly influential professor of medicine at Jena..

§. XVI. These small eggs differ from one another in maturity, as autopsy Used here in its literal sense: "seeing for oneself" through dissection. confirms; for it is established that some are larger and relatively transparent, while others are smaller, more solid, and situated deeper in the ovaries; the former are impregnated, while the latter less so, being immature. §. 12. Concerning this matter, Dr. de Graaf Reinier de Graaf (1641–1673), the Dutch physician who discovered the "Graafian follicles" in the ovary. writes thus: Age and intercourse cause the greatest change in the eggs: for in younger animals they are very small, and in older ones they become larger.

§. XVII. In every true and mature egg, since hydatids Fluid-filled vesicles or sacs. are also present, the rudiments or stamina The basic structural "threads" or framework of a living being. of the future fetus pre-exist, as has become known through the industry of recent authors, which should be sought from their own works, such as Marcello Malpighi 1628–1694; an Italian biologist who used the microscope to support "preformationism"—the idea that a tiny, fully formed organism exists inside the egg or sperm. and other moderns. Although this opinion is indeed burdened by some difficulties, they are by no means as great or significant as those of all the other theories; indeed, it is such that through it, not only does the whole business of generation become clear and many doubts arising around it are removed, but the effect corresponds to the theory in almost every way. Hence, I boldly embrace it along with the most learned leaders of medicine in this century. For the smallness of the body does nothing to hinder this theory, which detracts nothing from the order and organic structure of the parts, as seen in the example of mites original: "acarorum." The author argues that if microscopic mites can have complex organs, a microscopic human embryo can as well.. On the contrary, to bring forward one of the most famous among the countless opinions on the mode of formation—for it has Hippocrates as its author—the idea that the seed falls from the whole body and all its parts This is the theory of "Pangenesis," which suggested that every part of the parent's body contributed a "seed" to the offspring. has almost no foundation in either reason or anatomical experience, although Consentinus and Aemylius Parisanus, among others, [have defended] the same in distinct works...