Decisiones praecipuorum aliquot aporēmatōn iatrophilosophikōn

and are carried to the navel. These vessels are not contiguous with the vessels of the uterus, much less continuous with them. For there always lies between the orifices of the ramifications of these and those the spongy liver of the uterus. So that we might remain silent about the future tearing apart of the continuity of vessels in any birth, with great hemorrhage. Likewise, the umbilical vessels are surrounded by membranes, up to the insertion into the liver: no differently than the spermatic vessels are provided with the erythroide tunic from the peritoneum as far as the testes. One of these is the child's peritoneum, the other, the exterior, is the offspring of the fleshy membrane. And this, receding after the implantation of the vessels, having gradually become thinner, constitutes the amnion the innermost fetal membrane, and by a wondrous transformation becomes closest to the fetus: but the former, being stronger, [constitutes] the chorion the outermost fetal membrane, which is placed around the entire fetus and coheres with the uterine placenta by a strong bond. The ourachos urachus and the allantoeidēs allantois tunic are found in quadrupeds alone. For although a certain cord is seen with a wider base, which, having been born in humans from the upper seat of the fundus of the bladder, extends almost to the navel: yet it is thus gradually attenuated like an awl and hupocherō under the hand/subordinate tōn moriōn of the parts around the region of the navel, that it would not admit the point of the thinnest needle from the inner bladder. So that we might hold it for certain that the infant's urine is excreted through the genitals and contained by the amnion, even if Galen (Book 15 On the Use of Parts, ch. 5) brings forward the contrary. Furthermore, the ourachos urachus in brutes, arising from the fundus of the bladder, in the middle between the two veins and the two arteries constituting the navel, in almost the same way that the ureters insinuate themselves in the bladder between them, deposits urine into that cavity which intervenes between the amnion and the chorion, and is called the allantoeidēs allantois: and it is nothing other than a dilated ourachos urachus, like a cecal intestine. This extends from the pointed cartilage tou sternou of the sternum to the ilium, and is stretched from one horn of the uterus to the other. Therefore, the umbilical vessels are not formed in the first brephogonia embryogenesis.

IN birth, the pubic bones are not separated, which a significant, thick, and persistently adhering cartilage renders so strongly connected—no differently than with the most tenacious glue—that they would be considered concreted rather than joined: but the coccyx is bent towards the rear. Therefore, the first little bone of the coccyx in women (for these bones are found to be tighter in males) has a sinus above, like a pelvis, by which it receives the lowest part of the last sacral bone with a middle cartilage, and in it imitates the connection of the vertebrae among themselves, to produce some motion. Therefore, parēgorika soothing and malaktika softening [medicines] are to be applied to the coccyx and perineum in difficult childbirth, having shown at the same time the pollen of the testicles of a gelded horse, with cinnamon and saffron. One must act cautiously, however, lest, while we relax the paths with topicals, we dissolve the strength of the matrix, the nerves of the uterus, and the muscles of the abdomen (which, according to Galen, Book 3 On the Natural Faculties, ch. 1, 3, serve for the expulsion of the fetus). If nothing of these conduces [to help], if physicians should resort either to a uterine speculum or to embruoulkian embryotomy/extraction, so many women in childbirth would not be extinguished by that most bitter kind of death.