Published: 2017-12-24
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Excerpt from Edinburgh Medical Journal, Vol. 42: Combining the Monthly Journal of Medicine and the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal; July to December, 1896 The teratogenic theories of Democritus of Abdera, another physicist of the same age as Empedocles, did not take a very firm hold upon the philosophic mind. As we are told by Albertus Magnus,1 Democritus thought that double monsters were generated when the semen belonging to one or to two species was introduced into the uterus repeatedly at intervals; to begin with, the first semen reached the womb and sufficed to form the new being; soon there after the second semen arrived, mixed with the first, and began to Operate in its turn; and so the members came to be duplicated. The abuse of coitus was thus made out to be a teratogenic factor. Neither Empedocles nor Democritus ascribed to the female any formative power in the matter of generation; Aristotle, on the other hand, did so, and in consequence of this his theory of teratogenesis included faults in the female element in reproduction as well as in the semen. The Aristotelian hypothesis, therefore, was one which recognised a dual cause, and as such it will fall to be discussed immediately; in the meantime it may be said that through its weighty authority the case of the theories which looked for solely a seminal or solely a menstrual teratogenic factor was greatly weakened. Nevertheless Galen, living in the second century of the Christian era, seems to have believed in a purely seminal theory, for he thought that hermaphrodites were due to the entrance into the uterus of spermatic fluid from both the testicles. The Arabian physicians during the Dark Ages in Europe served to perpetuate the doctrines of the past, and prominently those of Aristotle; but Avicenna, like Galen, sought for an explanation Of the origin of hermaphrodites along the lines of the older theories, for he believed that whilst semen deposited in the left side of the uterus resulted in the birth of a girl, and in the right side in that of a boy, the male element when placed in the middle of the cavity gave rise to the procreation of a hermaphrodite. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.