Inaugural Medical Dissertation on the Procreation of Male Offspring

( 18. )
C

he asserts. For even assuming, he says, that the prolific matter of the male tends toward moisture and coldness: nonetheless, the continual dryness of the mother, and the very meager and sparse supply of nourishment, makes up for the father’s deficiency. But anyone can see that this erroneous assertion arises from a similar hypothesis of the ancients concerning generation through the mixing and combination of male and female seed. But where such an example is found, the question can be raised whether the husband is the father there, or at least the nurturer original: "genitor, an saltem altor." The author is questioning if the husband is the biological progenitor or merely the one who provides the physical material for the child's growth.. §. 41. 42. etc.

§. XXXXVI.

Heucherus Johannes Heinrich Heucher (1677–1747), a German physician and botanist. says in the cited place: It is not an absolute necessity for conception that the seed of each spouse be poured out at one and the same moment. In the procreation of a male, however, I judge it to be useful for the husband's seed to flow out either at the same time or a moment earlier than the woman's. For the simultaneous outpouring of seed is a sign that a proper harmony of temperaments exists between them, which, according to what has been said, is very powerful in the procreation of a male.

§. XXXXVII.

Therefore, if it happens that either the sterile are to be cured or a judgment must be made about them, it should always be judged whether the spouses enjoy a "symbolic" temperament original: "temperamento gaudeant symbolico." In this context, "symbolic" means matching or complementary according to the rules of humoral theory. or an "asymbolic" one. §. 42. For if the male is respectively hotter and drier (§. 44) and the female, by contrast, is cold and moist, the temperaments are symbolic, and there is hope for procreating a male. §. 41. 42. etc. And vice versa.

§. XXXXVIII.

Because all theory without practice is empty, that this [theory] regarding the harmony of temperaments now proposed by me corresponds to practice is confirmed by two examples from the Illustrious Wedel Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645–1721), a famous German physician, chemist, and philosopher., who is celebrated throughout the world for his success in practice and singular experience.

§. XXXXVIIII.

Through careful observation it has become known that obese males have fathered more females than males, even if they were otherwise quite healthy. Likewise the elderly, and even the very young, says Venette Nicolas Venette (1633–1698), author of a famous 17th-century treatise on "Conjugal Love.", experience proves that they almost always generate females; nor is the reason lacking (§. 8. 37). For the more mature, more "well-cooked" original: "excoctum." In humoral medicine, "coction" was the process by which the body's heat refined raw nutrients into blood and then into the "spirituous" seed. and thus more spirituous the seed is, the healthier and more robust the infants become,