92 EMBRYOLOGY FROM GALEN [pt. ii 



^'^ embryo formatus" had, and as a corollary could be baptised. 

 St Thomas Aquinas was of opinion that embryos dying in utero might 

 possibly be saved : but Fulgentius denied it. As for the ancient belief 

 that male embryos were formed twice as quickly as female ones, it 

 lingered on until Goelicke took the trouble to disprove it experi- 

 mentally in 1723. 



Clement of Alexandria, in his book \6<yo<i TrporpeTTriKO'i Trpo? 

 "EX\.7]va'i, has some remarks to make on embryology, but adds nothing 

 to the knowledge previously gained. He adopts the Peripatetic view 

 that generation results from the combination of semen with menstrual 

 blood, and he uses the Aristotelian illustration of rennet coagulating 

 milk. Lactantius of Nicomedia, who lived about the date of the 

 Nicene Council (a.d. 325) perpetuated the deeply-rooted association 

 of male with right and female with left in his book On the work of 

 God, De opificio Dei. He also maintained that the head was formed 

 before the heart in embryogeny, and seems to have opened hen's 

 eggs systematically at different stages, so that to this extent he was 

 a better embryologist than Galen. St Gregory of Nyssa, as we have 

 already seen (p. 20), evolved a neo-vitalistic theory which he ap- 

 plied to the growth of the embryo. 



Late Latin writers, other than the theologians, do not say much 

 about it. There is a passage in Ausonius, however, which describes 

 the development of the foetus {Eclog. de Rat. puerp.) but it is almost 

 wholly astrological. Elsewhere he says: 



juris idem tribus est, quod ter tribus; omnia in istis; 

 forma hominis coepti, plenique exactio partu, 

 quique novem novies fati tenet ultima finis. 



Idyll II (Gryphus ternarii numeri), 4-6. 

 (The power of 3, in 3 times 3 lies too, 

 Thus 9 rules human form and human birth, 

 And 9 times 9 the end of human life.) 



But this is probably a late echo of the Pythagoreans rather than 

 an early prelude to Leonardo da Vinci and the mathematisation of 

 nature. 



That great mass of Jewish writings known as the Talmud, which 

 grew up between the second and sixth centuries a.d., also contains 

 some references to embryology, and certain Jewish physicians, such 

 as Samuel-el-Yehudi, of the second century, are said to have devoted 



