The vessels of this
kind are much shorter in women than in men, because they are nearer to
the testicles; this defect is, however, made good by the many intricate
windings to which those vessels are subject; for they divide themselves
into two branches of different size in the middle and the larger one
passes to the testicles.
The stones in women are very useful, for where they are defective, the
work of generation is at an end. For though those bladders which are on
the outer surface contain no seed, as the followers of Galen and
Hippocrates wrongly believed, yet they contain several eggs, generally
twenty in each testicle; one of which being impregnated by the animated
part of the man's seed in the act of copulation, descends through the
oviducts into the womb, and thus in due course of time becomes a living
child.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XVI
_Of the Organs of Generation in Man._
Having given a description of the organs of generation in women, with
the anatomy of the fabric of the womb, I shall now, in order to finish
the first part of this treatise, describe the organs of generation in
men, and how they are fitted for the use for which Nature intended them.
The instrument of generation in men (commonly called the yard, in Latin,
_penis_, from _pendo_, to hang, because it hangs outside the belly), is
an organic part which consists of skin, tendons, veins, arteries, sinews
and great ligaments; and is long and round, and on the upper side
flattish, seated under the _os pubis_, and ordained by Nature partly for
the evacuation of urine, and partly for conveying the seed into the
womb; for which purpose it is full of small pores, through which the
seed passes into it, through the _vesicula seminalis_,[4] and discharges
the urine when they make water; besides the common parts, viz.
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