ARISTOTLE 



727 b 



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^ yap SZ : om. vulg. 



° Aristotle's notion that the menstrual blood is the sub- 

 stance from which the embryo is formed reigned un- 

 questioned for many centuries. (It appears in the Wisdom 

 of Solomon, vii. 2, " In the womb of a mother was I moulded 

 into flesh in the time of ten months, being compacted in 

 blood of the seed of man and the pleasure that came with 

 sleep.") It can be seen pictured in 16th centurj' obstetrical 

 books such as the De conceptu et generatione liominis of 

 Jacob llueff (1,554.). Its falsity was decisively demonstrated 

 by William Harvey, who in his Exercitationes de generatione 

 animalium (1651) describes his dissections of the uteri of 

 does in King Charles the First's forests, at diiferent stages 

 after coitus. The expected mass of blood and seed was 

 never found ; a source of great perplexitj' to Harvey himself, 

 since the mammalian egg was not discovered until long after 



100 



