Kitap 5
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THE greatest part of physicians affirm, that this happens casually and fortuitously; for, when the sperm of the man and woman is too much refrigerated, then children carry a dissimilitude to their parents. Empedocles, that a woman’s imagination when she conceives impresses a shape upon the infant; for women have been enamored with images and statues, and the children which were born of them gave their similitudes. The Stoics, that the resemblances flow from the sympathy and consent of minds, by the insertion of effluvias and rays, not of images or pictures.
Chapter XIII. WHENCE ARISETH BARRENNESS IN WOMEN, AND IMPOTENCY IN MEN?
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THE physicians maintain, that sterility in women may arise from the womb; for if it be after any ways thus affected, there will be barrenness,—if it be more condensed, or more spongy, or more hardened, or more callous, or more carneous; or it may be from low spirits, or from an atrophy or vicious distemper of body; or, lastly, it may arise from a twisted or distorted configuration. Diocles holds that the sterility in men ariseth from some of these causes,—either that they cannot at all ejaculate any sperm, or if they do, it is less than nature doth require, or else there is no generative faculty in the sperm, or the genital members are flagging; or from the obliquity of the yard. The Stoics attribute the cause of sterility to the contrariant qualities and dispositions of those who lie with one another; but if it chance that these persons are separated, and there happen a conjunction of those who are of a suitable temperament, then there is a commixture according to nature, and by this means an infant is formed.
Chapter XIV. HOW IT COMES TO PASS THAT MULES ARE BARREN.
