130 Translation from De Graaf 



similarity, either in form or contents, with the male testes properly 

 so called. On this account, many have considered these bodies useless, 

 but this is incorrect, because they are indispensable for reproduction. 

 This is proved by the remarkable convolutions of the nutritive vessels 

 about them, and is confirmed by the castration of females, which is 

 invariably accompanied by sterility. Varro writes that spayed cows 

 will conceive, if they copulate immediately; a thing which is no doubt 

 true of males, in which the seminal vesicles are still filled with sper- 

 matic fluid [after castration], but not of females, in which such 

 vesicles are not present. Hoffmann's assertion appears incorrect, a 

 fact which we should amply demonstrate, if it had not already been 

 done by Wharton. How the ova are fertilized and proceed to the 

 uterus will be explained in the following chapters. 



REFERENCES 



Corner, George W.: "The discovery of the mammalian ovum" Quart. Phi Beta Pi Med. 



Fratern. 27:76, 1930; also in Lectures on the History of Medicine; a series . . . at the Mayo 



Foundation . . . 792(3-/952 (Philadelphia and London: [C 19331), 40'- 

 De Graaf, Regner: De mulierum organis generationi insei-vientibus tractatus novus demon- 



strans tarn homines et animalia caetera omnia, quae vivipara dicuntur, hand minus quam 



ovipara ab ova originem ducere (Leyden: 1672). 

 : "Een nie^v ontwerp van de ledematen der vrouwen tot de voort-teelinge dienstig" 



etc., in Alle de ivercken, so in de ontleed-kunde als andere deelen der medicyne, beschreven 



door de Hr. Regnerus de Graaf, en sijn leven naukerig ontleder en gelukig geneesheer tot 



Delft (Amsterdam: 1686). 



On the Female Testes or Ovaria. Translated for "The British Record" (edited by 



Charles Clay, M.D., Manchester) from the original edition of 16SS, by R. Knox, M.D., 

 F.R.S.E., Edinburgh (Manchester: 1848). The copy in the Army Medical Library is boimd 

 with: The British Record of Obstetric Medicine and Surgery, for i8.f8, vol. I. 



