Chapter V.

1. The human subject also differs from other animals, as to the number of the perfect offspring produced at a birth. For the human subject differs both from animals which produce but one, and those which produce many; for, generally speaking, and, in most cases, women have but one child at a time, though cases of twins occur frequently, and in many places, as in Egypt, three or four at a birth have been known in some particular places, as I have observed before. Five at a birth are the most that have been produced. This has been observed to take place in many cases, but in one case only have twenty been produced at four births, for five were born each time, and many of them were reared. In other animals, if the twins are male and female, there is no more difficulty in rearing and preserving them, than if they were both of the same sex. In the human subject there are few cases of twins surviving, when one was male and the other female.

2. The human female and the mare copulate after conception more than any other creatures, for all other females, when they have conceived, fly from the males, except those which, like the hare, become pregnant a second time during gestation. But the mare, having once conceived, does not form a second fœtus, but generally produces a single foal. In the human subject it happens sometimes, though rarely. Those which are conceived a long while afterwards never come to perfection, but, from the pain which they cause, destroy the original fœtus; and a case has occurred in which twelve imperfect embryos have been produced at one time. If the second conception take place soon after the first, they bear and produce the fœtus, as if it were a twin. This, they say, was the case with Iphicles and Hercules.

3. The possibility of the case is manifest, for an adulteress has been known to produce one child like her husband, and another like her paramour; and a case has occurred of a woman having conceived twins, and then conceived a third child upon them; and when the proper time came, the twins were born perfect, the other was only a fœtus of five months old, which died immediately: and in another case, a woman produced, first of all, a fœtus of seven months old, and then twins, perfectly developed; the former perished, but the latter survived. And some women have conceived at the same time as they miscarried, and have ejected one fœtus while they bore the other. In most females, who have cohabited after the eighth month after conception, the child has been born filled with a shining mucous-like substance, and has often appeared full of the food which has been eaten by the mother; and if she has fed upon food more than usually salt, the child has been born without nails.