396 



inal living within another animal, controlling all the actions of the living 

 economy, burning to sate itself with the liquor of the male, and digesting 

 it to form a new individual. 



The great thickness of the cervix of the uterus has given room for 

 reasonable doubt, if its orifice could dilate sufficiently to admit a fluid of 

 the consistency of semen, Some, therefore, have thought that it was not 

 this fluid itself that penetrated into the cavity of the uterus, but the sub- 

 tlest of its parts, the most spiritualized, a prolific vapour, to which they 

 have given the name of aura seminalis ; but, besides that the semen has 

 been found in the uterus, in animals opened immediately after copulation, 

 Spallanzani, in his experiments on the fecundation of frogs, of salaman- 

 ders, and toads, perceived that, to enable the eggs to produce, it was not 

 enough to expose them to the vapour which rises from the seminal fluid 

 of the male : and that nothing was effected, unless the fluid semen actually 

 touched them, though in ever so small a quantity. 



It has been said, that the uterus dilates to receive the semen, constricts 

 itself to retain it, and that this spasmodic contraction of the uterus, felt, 

 as Galen assures us, by women, who preserve enough sang-froid to make 

 observations in that situation, was the most undoubted sign that could be 

 had of the success of the copulation. It is, no doubt, to ensure this re- 

 tention, that it is customary to throw cold water on the females of some 

 domestic animals, when they go too eagerly to the male. The spasm of 

 the skin, occasioned by the cold striking it, affects the uterus, and hin- 

 ders the flowing back of the semen which has been thrown into its ca- 

 vity. 



It has also seemed, that women conceive more easily, for a little time 

 after menstruation ; when the mouth of the uterus is less exactly closed 

 than usual. 



The seminal fluid, thrown into the cavity of the uterus, passes along 

 the fallopian tubes to the ovaria. It does not diffuse itself in the cavity 

 of the abdomen, because the membranous duct seizes the ovarium, which 

 corresponds to it, grasps it closely, and establishes an uninterrupted canal, 

 from this organ to the uterus. The ovarium, bedewed by the semen, ir- 

 ritated by its contact, lets a fluid escape, or perhaps a little ovum, which 

 passes into the uterus, the same way that the semen reached itself*. All 



* The account here given of the fecundation of the ovum, seems to us exceedingly 

 erroneous, and as this is a point of some interest, we will not too hastily dismiss it. 



It is our intention, first, to show that the semen does not enter the cavity of the ute- 

 rus, much less that it reaches the ovary. Those who differ from us on this subject, have 

 mostly insisted that the semen is thrown into the uterus, by injection from the penis. 

 True it is, that some other modes have been suggested, but they are really so ridiculous, 

 as to be wholly unworthy of criticism. 



That the male organ is endowed with a considerable projectile power, cannot be de- 

 nied. It is very conspicuously evinced, by the impetus with which the urine is dis- 

 charged. 



But admitting, that by an unusually vigorous impulse, it were projected as far as the 

 uterus, how could it enter into the cavity of that viscus ? Let it be recollected that the 

 os tincae, at least, in the virgin state, is nearly as small as the opening of the urethra in 

 the male, and is not placed in the immediate axis of the vagina, but is inclined more or 

 less to the one or the other side, or towards the sacrum. The apertures of the two 

 organs, therefore, are not in opposition. But this is not all. The os tineas is for the 

 most part filled with a thick glutinous matter, capable of considerable resistance. Where 

 it is wanting, as is generally the case in the virgin uterus, the hard, unyielding lips of 

 the tinea are so closely approximated as to be nearly closed. 



Nor arc these the only obstacles to the passage of the semen. The canal leading- 



