Inaugural Medical Dissertation on the Procreation of Male Offspring

...of the whole: nor does anything suggest that, once the nobler parts have been presupposed, we should call the less noble ones into doubt.

§. XXX.

If, therefore, every egg original: "ovulum" contains within itself the rudiments original: "stamina," referring to the preformed structural threads or initial fibers of the organism according to the preformationist theory. of a perfect fetus regarding the species which it fosters within, and the mother provides nothing but the matter, while the male imparts the form or life of the fetus; then the cause of whether a male or a female is generated lies not in the female, but in the male. Yet no generation occurs without a joint cause (§. 9). Therefore, the woman is not entirely excluded, insofar as she is able to both assist the male's faculty for procreating a male—as I will show in what follows—and to hinder it.

§. XXXI.

Between those whose union is to produce a fetus, one must possess a mature egg (§. 16) and the other subject must enjoy a vital and abundantly spirited original: "spirituoso," referring to the "animal spirits" or vital energy believed to reside in bodily fluids in 18th-century medicine. seed (§. 13, 19, and following), so that it is capable of movement and can set the rudiment into motion and impart vitality to it.

§. XXXII.

I consider an egg to be mature when it has grown to its proper size and, swollen with spirited liquid, stretches its outermost and innermost membranes (§. 21, 23) in such a way that the vital spirit of the male seed can easily break through its substance and stir the leaping point original: "punctum saliens," a term used by early embryologists to describe the first visible sign of the heart beating in an embryo. into motion. (§. 21)

§. XXXIII.

I believe that several such eggs—that is, mature ones—always exist at one time in an otherwise healthy and fertile subject; thus, I believe the generation of both male and female is always possible. Certainly, I have never been able to observe an ovary so constituted that there was only one mature egg there, but always several. Thus I have recognized that provident Nature is quite diligently focused on her own preservation. The learned De Graaf Regnier de Graaf (1641–1673) was a Dutch physician and anatomist who made key discoveries regarding the reproductive organs, including the follicles that bear his name. writes that very many are always present, among which it is not unbelievable that two or more are mature, as when he says: “These eggs are so numerous that we have sometimes counted twenty or more in a single testicle original: "testiculo." In early anatomy, the ovaries were frequently referred to as "female testicles" because they were seen as the female counterparts to the male organs..”

§. XXXIV.

Males have both a firmer body and a warmer temperament original: "temperamentum," referring to the balance of bodily humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) which determined a person's physical and mental constitution. than females, a fact which both the ancients and the mod-