SEX OF THE FCETUS. 147 



381. Founding on the debatable principle that the male embrj^o 

 is sooner developed than the female, Aristotle pretends, as well 

 as Hippocrates and many other ancient authors, that the woman 

 quickens earlier with a boy and later with a girl. Setting out with 



■the same idea, the relative strength of the foetus has been transferred 

 to tiie' mother; it has been said that she feels more vigor, activity, 

 gaiety, contentment; that her eyes are more lively, her face more 

 blooming, her pulse larger, more frequent, her digestion easier; that 

 all her functions, in a word, are executed more freely, when she is 

 to bear a male child, than when she is pregnant with a female; that 

 a brown or black ray along the median line of the belly, greater 

 strength, livelier color, nipples more prominent, a harder and tenser 

 breast, stronger pulsation of the carotids, veins larger on the right 

 than on the left side, announce the presence of a boy; that in getting 

 up or walking the woman advances the right knee or foot first; that 

 the womb is inclined to the right, that the urine is constantly loaded, 

 that it deposits a lateritious sediment, if there be a male child; and 

 that opposite phenomena are observed when it is of the female sex. 



382. I do not think it needful to combat in a serious way the 

 reasons by which physiologists and physicians have supported these 

 assertions; I should not have deemed it worth while even to mention 

 them, if they h;id not given rise to a crowd of prejudices that are 

 spread among the vulgar, prejudices which the quacks make the 

 most of, and which the ablest accoucheur is sometimes compelled 

 to manage as well as he can, when unable wholly to destroy them. 

 I shall content myself with observing that the several phenomena I 

 have just now enumerated have been, and continue to be met with 

 every day, as much, and not more for one sex than for the other; 

 that what passes as indicating a boy, Osiander, relying upon calcula- 

 tions, asserts that he has most frequently observed in women who 

 brought forth only girls, and that none of the numerous signs, estab- 

 lished, o priori, upon false notions, have ever been confirmed by the 

 careful observation of facts. All that can be said in this regard is, 

 that certain women, when they are pregnant with a boy, feel certain 

 symptoms, so distinct from those they experience when carrying a 

 female, that they can scarcely be deceived; but then the signs attri- 

 buted to pregnancy with the male sex sometimes announce the pre- 

 sence of a female foetus, and vice versa; most frequently there is a 

 blending of tiie phenomena proper to the two opposite sexes, which 

 always return with the same character for the same sex; so that these 

 peculiarities, entirely individual, only applicable to a few subjects, 

 and moreover pretty rare, can be of no use except to those women 

 alone who are aff'ected with th.era. 



