Chapter IV.

1. When conception has taken place, the uterus usually closes immediately for seven months. In the eighth month it opens, and the fœtus, if properly developed, begins to descend in the eighth month. If the fœtus is not properly developed, but checked in the eighth month in parturition, women who bear in the eighth month do not exclude it, nor does the fœtus advance downwards in the eighth month, and the uterus does not open itself. It is a sign that it is not properly developed, when it is born before the circumstances I have described take place.

2. After conception, women suffer throughout their whole body, and their sight becomes dim, and they are afflicted with headache. In some, these symptoms occur very soon, as early as the tenth day; in others they are delayed, in proportion as they have an abundance or deficiency of superfluous matter in their bodies. Nausea and vomiting often seize upon them, and on those especially in whom the purifications become stagnant, and do not yet fly to the mammæ. Some women suffer at the commencement of pregnancy, and others in the more advanced stages, when the fœtus begins to grow. Retention of urine also frequently attacks them at last.

3. Those that are pregnant with a male fœtus, usually pass through the time more easily, and retain a better colour throughout. If a female is conceived, the contrary is the case; for they are generally more discoloured, and suffer more during the period of gestation. In many cases the legs swell, and a swollen condition of the flesh is also common. In some women, however, the condition is contrary. Pregnant women are apt to have all sorts of fancies, which change very rapidly. Some persons call this longing. These fancies are strongest when a female is conceived, and there is but little pleasure in their gratification. In a few women the condition of the body is better during pregnancy; they suffer most when the hair of the fœtus begins to grow. Pregnant women lose the hair which grows on the parts that are hairy at birth, while it becomes more thick upon the parts on which it appears subsequent to birth.

4. A male fœtus usually moves more freely in the womb than a female, and the parturition is not so long. If a female, the parturition is slower. The pain in the birth of female children is continuous, and dull; in the birth of males it is sharp, and far more severe. Those who, before parturition, have sexual intercourse, suffer less in the process. Sometimes women seem to suffer, not from any pain of their own, but from the turning of the head of the child; and this appears to be the commencement of the pain. Other animals have a single exact period for parturition, for one time is appointed for them all. The human subject alone varies in this particular, for the period of gestation is seven, eight, or nine months, or ten at the outside, though some have even advanced as far as the eleventh month.

5. If any are born before the seventh month, they never live. Those of seven months are the first that are developed, but these are usually weakly, wherefore, also, they wrap them in wool. Many of these infants have the passages, as the ears and nostrils, imperforate. As they grow, however, they assume a proper form, and many of them survive. In Egypt, and some other places, where the women suffer little pain in parturition, and where they bear many children with ease, those even at the end of eight months are capable of living, even although they should be monstrous; but in such places children born in the eighth month may survive and be brought up. In Greece, however, few of them survive, and most of them perish; and people suspect that if any of them survive, the exact period of conception must have been mistaken by the mother.

6. Women suffer most in the fourth and eighth month, and if the fœtus dies in the fourth or eighth month, they usually die also; so that not only children born in the eighth month often perish, but their mothers also perish with them. In the same way, the period of conception probably is mistaken by those who have been pregnant more than eleven months; for in these cases the beginning of the conception escapes the notice of females, for frequently after the uterus has been distended with flatulence, women have copulated and conceived, and supposed that the former condition in which they observed the usual symptoms, was the commencement of gestation.