96 EMBRYOLOGY FROM GALEN [pt. ii 



vessel, into one of which a fiend pours some noxious substance from 

 the left-hand corner. St Hildegard describes and expounds the scene 

 as follows: "Behold, I saw upon earth men carrying milk in earthen 

 vessels and making cheeses therefrom. Some was of the thick kind 

 from which firm cheese is made, some of the thinner sort from which 

 more porous cheese is made, and some was mixed with corruption 

 and of the sort from which bitter cheese is made. And I saw the like- 

 ness of a woman having a complete human form within her womb. 

 And then by a secret disposition of the most high craftsman, a fiery 

 sphere having none of the lineaments of a human body possessed the 

 heart of the form and reached the brain and transfused itself through 

 all the members. . . . And I saw that many circling eddies possessed 

 the sphere and brought it earthward, but with ever renewed force 

 it returned upwards and wailed aloud, asking, 'I, wanderer that I 

 am, where am I?' 'In death's shadow.' 'And where go I?' 'In the 

 way of sinners.' 'And what is my hope? ' ' That of all wanderers.' . . . 

 As for those whom thou hast seen carrying milk in earthen vessels, they 

 are in the world, men and women alike, having in their bodies the 

 seed of mankind from which are procreated the various kinds of 

 human beings. Part is thickened because the seed in its strength 

 is well and truly concocted and this produces forceful men to whom 

 are allotted gifts both spiritual and carnal.. . .And some had cheeses 

 less firmly curdled, for in their feebleness they have seed imperfectly 

 tempered and they raise offspring mostly stupid, feeble, and use- 

 less, . . . And some was mixed with corruption . , . for the seed in that 

 brew cannot be rightly raised, it is invalid, and makes misshapen 

 men who are bitter distressed and oppressed of heart so that they 

 may not lift their gaze to higher things. . . .And often in forgetfulness 

 of God and by the mocking devil a mistio is made of the man and 

 the woman and the thing born therefrom is deformed, for parents 

 who have sinned against me return to me crucified in their children". 

 We have already traced the wanderings of the cheese-analogy, 

 which, beginning fresh with Aristotle, was taken to Alexandria and 

 incorporated in the Wisdom Literature, and so found its way to the 

 Arabic of 'Ali ibn a'1-Abbas al-Majusi, or Haly-Abbas, as he was 

 known in the West, a Persian. His Liber Totius appeared in Latin 

 in 1523, but had been translated much earlier, at Monte Cassino 

 between 1070 and 1085, by Constantine the African, who called it 

 Liber de Humana Natura, and gave it out to be his own work. Thus 



