ON CONCEPTION. 



FABRICIUS has indeed recounted many wonderful things 011 

 the subject of parturition ; for my own part, I think there is more 

 to admire and marvel at in conception. It is a matter, in truth, 

 full of obscurity; yet will I venture to put forth a few things 

 rather though as questions proposed for 'solution that I may not 

 appear to subvert other men's opinions only, without bringing 

 forward anything of my own. Yet what I shall state I wish 

 not to be taken as if I thought it a voice from an oracle, or 

 desired to gain the assent of others by violence ; I claim, how- 

 ever, that liberty which I willingly yield to others, the permis- 

 sion, viz. in subjects of difficulty to put forward as true such 

 things as appear to be probable until proved to be manifestly 

 false. 



It is to the uterus that the business of conception is chiefly 

 intrusted : without this structure and its functions conception 

 would be looked for in vain. But since it is certain that the 

 semen of the male does not so much as reach the cavity of the 

 uterus, much less continue long there, and that it carries with 

 it a fecundating power by a kind of contagious property, (not 

 because it is then and there in actual contact, or operates, but 

 because it previously has been in contact) ; the woman, after 

 contact with the spermatic fluid in coitu, seems to receive in- 

 fluence, and to become fecundated without the co-operation of 

 any sensible corporeal agent, in the same way as iron touched 

 by the magnet is endowed with its powers and can attract other 

 iron to itself. When this virtue is once received the woman 

 exercises a plastic power of generation, and produces a being 

 after her own image ; not otherwise than the plant, which we 

 see endowed with the forces of both sexes. 



