122 EMBRYOLOGY FROM GALEN [pt. ii 



the first outline of the cranium is seen taking shape in the upper 

 part of the "egg". In (/) the blood-vessels have suddenly assumed 

 the outline of a human being, and in (g) the finished product is seen. 

 Rueff gives what seems to be a mnemonic in hexameters : 



iniectum semen, sex primis certe diebus 

 est quasi lac : reliquisque novem sit sanguis ; at inde 

 consolidat duodena dies; bis nona deinceps 

 effigiat; tempusque sequens producit ad ortum 

 talis enim praedicto tempore figura consit. 



Rueff gives some excellent diagrams of the foetus in utero with 

 relation to the rest of the body, and the various positions which are 

 familiar to obstetricians. His teratology is less happy, for he attri- 

 butes the production of monsters to the direct action of God, though 

 he does venture upon a few speculations concerning "corrupt seed". 

 But his principal significance for this history is that, in his picture 

 of the yolk-like mass of mixed semen and blood and the pseudo- 

 blastoderm upon it, he throws a good light on the conceptions of 

 the time. 



Rueff 's book was subsequently translated into English, and had 

 many editions as The Expert Midwife. 



The principal representative of the second class of popular books 

 of this period is that of Euch. Rhodion, or Rosslein, which was 

 translated into English, and published as his own work, by Thomas 

 Raynold, " physition ", in 1 545, under the title of The Byrth ofMankynde 

 otherwyse named The Woman" s Book (cf. d'Arcy Power). It was the first 

 book in the English language to contain copper engravings. They 

 were variants of the traditional Soranus-Moschion figures. The 

 Rosslein-Raynold book pays less attention to Galenic theory than does 

 that of Rueff, and includes much better drawings of actual dissec- 

 tions. Another famous obstetrical book was that of Scipio Mercurius; 

 for further information here see Spencer. 



The minor embryologists of the sixteenth century included among 

 them Ambroise Pare, the founder of modern surgery. His teaching 

 on generation involved nothing original, but it seems to have been 

 Galenism interpreted by a very intelligent and well-balanced, un- 

 speculative mind. The three-bubble theory appears in him very 

 clearly; thus, we read, "The seed boileth and fermenteth in the 

 womb, and swelleth into three bubbles or bladders" — the brain, the 



