92 OF MENSTRUATION. 



cease suddenly, or without occasioning some disorder: on some occa- 

 sions their suppression is preceded by a gradual diminution of the 

 duration of each period, and of the quantity of blood lost; or on the 

 contrary, by an increase which sometimes converts them into a 

 pretty abundant hemorrhage; sometimes they cease, return again to 

 cease and return, before a final stop is put to them; they become 

 irregular in character; a mucous discharge is established; lassitude, 

 sense of suffocation, nervous complaints, even severe diseases occur 

 in some cases; but in others, also, nothing of all this is observed to 

 happen, and the health, which up to that period had been precarious, 

 becomes quite confirmed; strength is restored; the emaciated indi- 

 vidual grows fat, and finds nothing but benefits in the loss of her 

 catamenial discharges. 



ARTICLE II. 



Of Reproduction. 



11^. Designed for the perpetuation of species, reproduction is a 

 function peculiar to living beings. Inert bodies are produced, but 

 never reproduce. "Without contradiction, reproduction constitutes 

 one of the most astonishing phenomena of animated nature: and 

 how many efforts have been made, from the beginning of time until 

 now, to ascertain its mechanism! Indeed, ought not man, whose 

 prerogative it is to think, first to endeavor to understand himself? 

 Can any thing in the universe interest him so much as his own ori- 

 gin? Yet these efforts so multiplied, these researches so ably con- 

 ducted, and these labors, of all sorts pursued so perseveringly by 

 the most celebrated men, have hitherto scarcely served to any other 

 end than to show him how deep is the mystery that veils the com- 

 mencement of his existence. 



227. Pythagoras and his disciples said that the embryo is formed 

 out of the menstrual blood, and a kind of moisture that descends 

 from the brain during coition, and that it is developed according to 

 the laws of harmony. 



228. Empedocles and Hippocrates, who are not less obscure than 

 the former on this subject, thought that both the male and female 

 enclosed the molecules of embryos of both sexes, and that these 

 molecules were united in the womb during the sexual union. 



229. Aristotle, with certain modifications, reproduced the idea of 

 Pythagoras, and by an ingenious metaphor, made of the womb a real 

 sculptor's shop, where the woman furnished the marble, the man 

 brought the workman, and the embryo represented the statue. 



