_Of Conception and its Signs, and How a Woman may know whether it
be Male or Female._
Ignorance often makes women the murderesses of the fruit of their own
body, for many, having conceived and finding themselves out of order,
and not rightly knowing the cause, go to the shop of their own conceit
and take whatever they think fit, or else (as the custom is) they send
to the doctor for a remedy, and he, not perceiving the cause of their
trouble, for nothing can be diagnosed accurately by the urine,
prescribes what he thinks best; perhaps some diuretic or cathartic,
which destroy the embryo. Therefore Hippocrates says, it is necessary
that women should be instructed in the signs of conception, so that the
parent as well as the child may be saved from danger. I shall,
therefore, lay down some rules, by which every woman may know whether
she is pregnant or not, and the signs will be taken from the woman, from
her urine, from the child and from experiments.
SIGNS.
The first day after conception, she feels a slight quivering and
chilliness throughout her body; there is a tickling of the womb and a
little pain in the lower parts of her stomach. Ten or twelve days after
she feels giddy and her eyes dim and with circles round them; the
breasts swell and grow hard, with some pain and pricking in them, whilst
the stomach rises and sinks again by degrees, and there is a hardness
about the navel. The nipples grow red, the heart beats unusually
strongly, the natural appetite abates, and the woman has a craving after
strange food. The neck of the womb is contracted, so that it can
scarcely be felt when the finger is put in. And the following is an
infallible sign; she is alternately in high spirits and melancholy; the
monthly courses cease without any apparent cause, the evacuations from
the bowels are retained unusually long, by the womb pressing on the
large gut, and her desire for sexual intercourse is diminished. The
surest sign is taken from the infant, which begins to move in the womb
in the third or fourth month, and not in the manner of a mole, mentioned
above, from side to side like a stone, but gently, as may be perceived
by applying the hand cold upon the stomach.
SIGNS TAKEN FROM THE URINE.
The best writers affirm that the water of a pregnant woman is white and
has little specks in it, like those in a sunbeam, ascending and
descending in it, of an opal colour, and when the sediment is disturbed
by shaking the urine, it looks like carded wool. In the middle of
gestation it turns yellow, then red and lastly black, with a red film.
At night on going to bed, let her drink water and honey, and if
afterwards she feels a beating pain in her stomach and about the navel,
she has conceived. Or let her take the juice of cardius, and if she
brings it up again, that is a sign of conception. Throw a clean needle
into the woman's urine, put it into a basin and let it stand all night.
If it is covered with red spots in the morning, she has conceived, but
if it has turned black and rusty, she has not.
SIGNS TAKEN FROM THE SEX, TO SHOW WHETHER IT BE A MALE OR FEMALE.
If it is a male, the right breast swells first, the right eye is
brighter than the left, the face is high-coloured, because the colour is
such as the blood is, and as the male is conceived of purer blood and of
more perfect seed than the female, red specks in the urine, and making a
sediment, show that a male has been conceived, but if they are white, a
female. Put the urine of the woman into a glass bottle, let it stand
tightly stoppered for two days, then strain it through a fine cloth,
and you will find little animals in it. If they are red, it is a male,
but if white, it is a female.
The belly is rounder and lies higher with a boy than with a girl, and
the right breast is harder and plumper than the left, and the right
nipple redder, and the woman's colour is clearer than when she has
conceived a girl.
To conclude, the most certain sign to give credit to, is the motion of
the child, for the male moves in the third month, and the female not
until the fourth.
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