And, therefore, Galen thinks that the child
receives its sex rather from the mother than the father, for though his
seed contributes a little to the natural principle, yet it is more
weakly. But for likeliness it is referred rather to the father than to
the mother. Yet the woman's seed receiving strength from the menstrual
blood for the space of nine months, overpowers the man's in that
particular, for the menstrual blood rather cherishes the one than the
other; from which it is plain the woman affords both matter to make and
force and virtue to perfect the conception; though the female's be fit
nutriment for the male's by reason of the thinness of it, being more
adapted to make up conception thereby. For as of soft wax or moist clay,
the artificer can frame what he intends, so, say they, the man's seed
mixing with the woman's and also with the menstrual blood, helps to
make the form and perfect part of man.
But, with all imaginary deference to the wisdom of our fathers, give me
leave to say that their ignorance of the anatomy of man's body have led
them into the paths of error and ran them into great mistakes. For their
hypothesis of the formation of the embryo from commixture of blood being
wholly false, their opinion in this case must of necessity be likewise.
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