The Complete Works of Aristotle

by Barnes, Jonathan, Aristotle

  The case has also occurred where a woman, being pregnant of twins, has subsequently conceived a third child; and in course of time she brought forth the twins perfect and at full term, but the third a five-months’ child; and this last died there and then. And in another case it happened that the woman was first delivered [20] of a seventh-months’ child, and then of two which were of full term; and of these the first died and the other two survived.

  Some also have been known to conceive while about to miscarry, and they have lost the one child and been delivered of the other.

  If women while going with child cohabit after the eighth month the child is in [25] most cases born covered over with a slimy fluid. Often also the child is found to be replete with food of which the mother had partaken.

  When women have partaken of salt in over-abundance their children are apt to be born destitute of nails.

  5 · Milk that is produced earlier than the seventh month is unfit for use; but [30] as soon as the child is fit to live the milk is fit to use. The first of the milk is saltish, as it is with sheep. Most women are sensibly affected by wine during pregnancy; for if they partake of it they grow relaxed and debilitated.

  The beginning of child-bearing in women and of the capacity to procreate in [35] men, and the cessation of these functions in both cases, coincide in the one case with the emission of seed and in the other with the discharge of the menstrual fluids: with this qualification, that there is a lack of fertility at the commencement of these symptoms, and again towards their close when the emissions become scanty and [585b1] weak. The age at which the sexual powers begin has been related already. As for their end, the menstrual discharge ceases in most women about their fortieth year; but with those in whom it goes on longer it lasts even to the fiftieth year, and women of that age have been known to bear children. But beyond that age there is no case [5] on record.

  6 · Men in most cases continue to be fertile until they are sixty years old, and if that limit be overpassed then until seventy years; and men have been actually known to procreate children at seventy years of age. With many men and many women it so happens that they are unable to produce children to one another, while [10] they are able to do so in union with other individuals. The same thing happens with regard to the production of male and female offspring; for sometimes men and women in union with one another produce male children or female, as the case may be, but children of the opposite sex when otherwise mated. And they are apt to change in this respect with advancing age; for sometimes a husband and wife while [15] they are young produce female children and in later life male children; and in other cases the very contrary occurs. And just the same thing is true in regard to the generative faculty; for some while young are childless, but have children when they grow older; and some have children to begin with, and later on no more.

  There are certain women who conceive with difficulty, but if they do conceive, [20] bring the child to maturity; while others again conceive readily, but are unable to bring the child to birth. Furthermore, some men and some women produce female offspring and some male, as for instance in the story of Hercules, who among all his [25] two and seventy children is said to have begotten but one girl. Those women who are unable to conceive, save with the help of medical treatment or some other adventitious circumstance, are as a general rule apt to bear female children rather than male.

  It is a common thing with men to be at first sexually competent and afterwards impotent, and then again to revert to their former powers.

  [30] From deformed parents come deformed children, lame from lame and blind from blind, and speaking generally, children often resemble their parents in respect of their unnatural features and are born with similar marks, such as pimples or scars. Such things have been known to be handed down through three generations; for instance, a certain man had a mark on his arm which his son did not possess, but [35] his grandson had it in the same spot though not very distinct.

  Such cases, however, are few; for the children of cripples are mostly sound,4 [586a1] and there is no hard and fast rule regarding them. While children mostly resemble their parents or their ancestors, it sometimes happens that no such resemblance is to be traced. But parents may pass on resemblance after several generations, as in the [5] case of the woman in Elis, who committed adultery with a negro; in this case it was not the woman’s own daughter but the daughter’s child that was a negro.

  As a rule the girls have a tendency to take after the mother, and the boys after the father; but sometimes it is the other way, the boys taking after the mother and the girls after the father. And they may resemble both parents in particular features.

  There have been known cases of twins that had no resemblance to one another, [10] but they are alike as a general rule. There was once a woman who had intercourse with her husband a week after giving birth to a child, and she conceived and bore a second child as like the first as any twin. Some women have a tendency to produce children that take after themselves, and others children that take after the husband; and this latter case is like that of the mare in Pharsalus, that got the name of the [15] Honest Wife.

  7 · In the emission of semen there is a preliminary discharge of air, and the outflow is manifestly caused by a blast of air; for nothing is cast to a distance save by force of air. After the seed reaches the womb and remains there for a while, a [20] membrane forms around it; for when it happens to escape before it is distinctly formed, it looks like an egg enveloped in its membrane after removal of the eggshell; and the membrane is full of veins.

  All animals, whether they fly or swim or walk upon dry land, whether they bring forth their young alive or in the egg, develop in the same way: save only that [25] some have the navel attached to the womb, namely the viviparous animals, and some have it attached to the egg, and some to both parts alike, as in a certain sort of fishes. And in some cases membranous envelopes surround the egg, and in other cases the chorion surrounds it. And first of all the animal develops within the innermost envelope, and then another membrane appears around the former one, which latter is for the most part attached to the womb, but is in part separated from it and contains fluid. In between is a watery or sanguineous fluid, which women call [30] the forewaters.

  8 · All animals which have a navel, grow by the navel. And the navel is attached to the cotyledon in all such as possess cotyledons, and to the womb itself by a vein in all such as have the womb smooth. And as regards their shape within the womb, the four-footed animals all lie stretched out, and the footless animals lie on [586b1] their sides, as for instance fishes; but two-legged animals lie in a bent position, as for instance birds; and human embryos lie bent, with nose between the knees and eyes upon the knees, and the ears free at the sides.

  All animals alike have the head upwards to begin with; but as they grow and [5] approach the term of egress from the womb they turn downwards, and birth in the natural course of things takes place in all animals head foremost; but in abnormal cases it may take place in a bent position, or feet foremost.

  The young of quadrupeds when they are near their full time contain excrements, both liquid and in the form of solid lumps, the latter in the lower part of [10] the bowel and the urine in the bladder.

  In those animals that have cotyledons in the womb the cotyledons grow less as the embryo grows bigger, and at length they disappear altogether. The navel-string is a sheath wrapped about blood-vessels which have their origin in the womb, from [15] the cotyledons in those animals which possess them and from a blood-vessel in those which do not. In the larger animals, such as the embryos of oxen, the vessels are four in number, and in smaller animals two; in the very little ones, such as birds, one vessel only.

  Of the vessels that run into the embryo, two pass through the liver where the [20] so-called gates are, running in the direction of the great vein, and the other two run in the direction of the aorta towards the point where it divides and becomes two vessels instead of one. Around each pair of blood-
vessels are membranes, and surrounding these membranes is the navel-string itself, after the manner of a sheath. And as the embryo grows, the veins themselves tend more and more to [25] dwindle in size. And also as the embryo matures it comes down into the hollow of the womb and is observed to move here, and sometimes rolls over in the vicinity of the pudenda.

  9 · When women are in labour, their pains occur in many different parts of the body, and in most cases to one or other of the thighs. Those are the quickest to be [30] delivered who experience severe pains in the region of the belly; and parturition is difficult in those who begin by suffering pain in the loins, and speedy when the pain is abdominal. If the child about to be born be a male, the preliminary flood is watery and pale in colour, but if a girl it is tinged with blood, though still watery. In some cases of labour these latter phenomena do not occur, either one way or the other.

  [587a1] In other animals parturition is unaccompanied by pain, and the dam is plainly seen to suffer but moderate inconvenience. In women, however, the pains are more severe, and this is especially the case in persons of sedentary habits, and in those who are weak-chested and short of breath. Labour is apt to be especially difficult if [5] during the process the woman while exerting force with her breath fails to hold it in.

  First of all, when the embryo starts to move and the membranes burst, there issues forth the watery flood; then afterwards comes the embryo, while the womb everts and the afterbirth comes out from within.

  10 · The cutting of the navel-string, which is the nurse’s duty, is a matter [10] calling for no little care and skill. For not only in cases of difficult labour must she be able to render assistance with skilful hand, but she must also have her wits about her in all contingencies, and especially in the operation of tying the cord. For if the afterbirth has come away, the navel is tied off from the afterbirth with a woollen [15] thread and is then cut above it; and at the place where it has been tied it heals up, and the remaining portion drops off. (If the tie comes loose the child dies from loss of blood.) But if the afterbirth has not yet come away, but remains after the child itself is extruded, it is cut away within after the tying of the cord.

  [20] It often happens that the child appears to have been born dead when it is merely weak, and when, before the umbilical cord has been tied the blood has run out into the cord and its surroundings. But experienced midwives have been known to squeeze back the blood into the child’s body from the cord, and immediately the child that a moment before was bloodless came back to life again.

  [25] It is the natural rule, as we have mentioned above, for all animals to come into the world head foremost, and children, moreover, have their hands stretched out by their sides. And the child gives a cry and puts its hands up to its mouth as soon as it issues forth.

  Moreover the child voids excrement sometimes at once, sometimes a little [30] later, but in all cases during the first day; and this excrement is unduly copious in comparison with the size of the child; it is what the midwives call the ‘poppy-juice’. In colour it resembles blood, extremely dark and pitch-like, but later on it becomes milky, for the child takes at once to the breast. Before birth the child makes no sound—not even when in difficult labor it puts forth its head while the rest of the body remains within.

  [587b1] In cases where flooding takes place rather before its time, it is apt to be followed by difficult parturition. But if discharge take place after birth in small quantity, and in cases where it only takes place at the beginning and does not [5] continue till the fortieth day, then in such cases women make a better recovery and are the sooner ready to conceive again.

  Until the child is forty days old it neither laughs nor weeps during waking hours, but of nights it sometimes does both; and for the most part it does not even notice being tickled, but passes most of its time in sleep. As it keeps on growing it [10] gets more and more wakeful; and moreover it shows signs of dreaming, though it is long afterwards before it remembers what it dreams.

  In other animals there is no contrasting difference between one bone and another, but all are properly formed; but in children the fontanelle is soft and late ossifying. And some animals are born with teeth, but children begin to cut their teeth in the seventh month; and the front teeth are the first to come through, [15] sometimes the upper and sometimes the lower ones. And the warmer the nurses’ milk so much the quicker are the children’s teeth to come.

  11 · After parturition and the cleansing flood the milk comes in plenty, and in some women it flows not only from the nipples but at divers parts of the breasts, [20] and in some cases even from the armpits. And for some time afterwards there continue to be ‘knots’, which occur when it so happens that the moisture is not concocted and finds no outlet but solidifies. For the whole breast is so spongy that if a woman in drinking happen to swallow a hair, she gets a pain in her breast, which [25] ailment is called ‘trichia’; and the pain lasts till the hair either find its own way out or be sucked out with the milk. Women continue to have milk until their next conception; and then the milk stops coming and goes dry, alike in the human species and in the quadrupedal vivipara. So long as there is a flow of milk the menstrual [30] discharges do not take place as a general rule, though the discharge has been known to occur during the period of suckling. For, speaking generally, a flow of moisture does not take place at one and the same time in several directions; as for instance the menstrual discharges tend to be scanty in persons suffering from haemorrhoids. And in some women the like happens owing to their suffering from varicose veins, when the fluids issue from the pelvic region before entering into the womb. And patients who during suppression of the menses happen to vomit blood are no whit [588a1] the worse.

  12 · Children are very commonly subject to convulsions, more especially such of them as are more than ordinarily well-nourished on rich or unusually plentiful milk from a stout nurse. Wine tends to excite this malady, and red wine is [5] worse than white, especially when taken undiluted; and most things that tend to induce flatulency are also bad, and constipation too is prejudicial. The majority of deaths in infancy occur before the child is a week old, hence it is customary to name the child at that age, from a belief that it has now a better chance of survival. This malady is worst at the full moon; and it is a dangerous symptom when the spasms [10] begin in the child’s back.

  BOOK VIII

  1 · We have now discussed the physical characteristics of animals and their methods of generation. Their habits and their modes of living vary according to their character and their food. [15]

  In the great majority of animals there are traces of psychical qualities which are more markedly differentiated in the case of human beings. For just as we pointed out resemblances in the physical organs, so in a number of animals we observe gentleness or fierceness, mildness or cross temper, courage or timidity, fear [20] or confidence, high spirit or low cunning, and, with regard to intelligence, something equivalent to sagacity. Some of these qualities in man, as compared with the corresponding qualities in animals, differ only quantitatively: that is to say, a man has more of this quality, and an animal has more of some other; other qualities in man are represented by analogous qualities: for instance, just as in man we find [25] knowledge, wisdom, and sagacity, so in certain animals there exists some other natural capacity akin to these. The truth of this statement will be the more clearly apprehended if we have regard to the phenomena of childhood; for in children may be observed the traces and seeds of what will one day be settled habits, though [588b1] psychologically a child hardly differs for the time being from an animal; so that one is quite justified in saying that, as regards man and animals, certain psychical qualities are identical with one another, whilst others resemble, and others are analogous to, each other.

  Nature proceeds little by little from things lifeless to animal life in such a way [5] that it is impossible to determine the exact line of demarcation, nor on which side thereof an intermediate form should lie. Thus, next after lifeles
s things comes the plant, and of plants one will differ from another as to its amount of apparent vitality; and, in a word, the whole genus of plants, whilst it is devoid of life as [10] compared with an animal, is endowed with life as compared with other corporeal entities. Indeed, as we just remarked, there is observed in plants a continuous scale of ascent towards the animal. So, in the sea, there are certain objects concerning which one would be at a loss to determine whether they be animal or vegetable. For instance, certain of these objects are fairly rooted,1 and in several cases perish if [15] detached; thus the pinna is rooted to a particular spot, and the razor-shell cannot survive withdrawal from its burrow. Indeed, broadly speaking, the entire genus of testaceans have a resemblance to vegetables, if they be contrasted with such animals as are capable of progression.

  In regard to sensibility, some animals give no indication whatsoever of it, whilst others indicate it but indistinctly. Further, the substance of some of these intermediate creatures is fleshlike, as is the case with the so-called ascidians and the [20] sea-anemones; but the sponge is in every respect like a vegetable. And so throughout the entire animal scale there is a graduated differentiation in amount of vitality and in capacity for motion.