SECT. LX.—ON AFFECTIONS OF THE UTERUS; AND, FIRST, OF THE MENSTRUAL
DISCHARGE.
With most women the menstrual discharge begins about the fourteenth year
of their age; a few have it earlier, in their thirteenth or twelfth;
and not a few are later than their fourteenth in having it. There is no
limited time for the continuance of it, many having it only for two or
three days, most women for five days, some for seven, and a very few have
it for twelve days. The menses cease about the fiftieth year of age, a
few have them till sixty, and with some they begin to disappear about
thirty-five, particularly with such as are fat. When, therefore, the
evacuation is delayed, it will be proper to have recourse to baths and
potions before the expected period, such as the frequent draughts from
sesame, or the headed leek boiled together with pepper and rue. But they
must be drunk in Cretan sweet wine. Having drunk a cotylé of it, let the
woman excite the flow of the menses by walking; and let her eat calamary,
cuttle-fish, and polypus, and other things of the same kind, for they are
particularly adapted for raising a tumult in the blood.
* * * * *
COMMENTARY. The following is a list of the ancient authors on midwifery:
Hippocrates (de Nat. Mulieb.; de Morbis Mulier.; de Steril.); Galen (de
Med. sec. loc. ix, et alibi); Aretæus (Morb. Chron. ii, 11); Oribasius
(Med. Collect, iv; Synops. ix); Ruffus Ephesius (i); Actuarius (Meth.
Med. iv); Aëtius (xvi); Soranus (de Arte Obitat.); Nonnus (103); Celsus
(iv); Octavius Horatianus (iii); Pseudo-Dioscorides (Euporist. ii, 80);
Moschion (de Morb. Mulier.; Isagoge Anatomica, xxix); Meletius (de Nat.
Hom. 24, seq.); Marcellus (de Medicam. xxxiii); Eros (apud Gynæcia);
Pliny (H. N. xxviii, xxx); Avicenna (iii, 21); Serapion (v); Avenzoar
(ii, 5); Averrhoes (Collig. iv, 60); Albucasis (Chirurg. ii); Haly Abbas
(Theor. ix, 39; Pract. viii); Alsaharavius (Pract. xxv); Rhases (ad
Mansor. ix; Contin. xxii.)
The ideas entertained by the ancients respecting the nature of the
menstrual discharge may be best learned from Aristotle (de Generat.
Animal, i, 19.) Our limits will not permit us to do justice to his
theory of conception. It may be proper to state, however, that he holds
the menses to proceed from a sanguineous superfluity (περίττωμα) in the
system. This theory found a strenuous advocate in his great commentator
Averrhoes (Collig. iii, 29); and Button’s views on this subject are very
little different. Hippocrates, in like manner, taught that the male semen
is a superfluity collected from all parts of the body, and fancied that
if any part of the parent was maimed, the semen was defective, and gave
rise to a similar defect in the child engendered. (De Aere et Aquis, 52.)
Pythagoras called it the froth of the blood and the superfluity of the
aliment. (Plutarch de Placitis Philos. v, 3.)
Dutens gives a learned account of the ancient theories on the generation
of animals. Suffice it to say, that Empedocles, Hippocrates, Aristotle,
and most of the philosophers taught that all animals derive their origin
from ova; but that Democritus and a few others maintained that they are
produced from spermatic animalcules. (Origine des Découvr.)
It appears to have been the popular belief in ancient times that the moon
exercises a certain influence on the womb; and hence Homer refers the
sudden deaths of women to Diana. See Eustathius (ad Iliad, xx, 59.)
We may allude in this place to the ancient belief in superfœtation. See
Hippocrates (de Superfœt.) Asclepius, a commentator on this work, relates
a singular case from his own personal knowledge. (T. ii, 470, ed. Dietz.)
Aristotle relates several curious cases of superfœtation. (H. A. vii, 6.)