SECT. II.--_Of the difference between the ancient and modern Physicians,
touching the woman's contributing seed for the Formation of the
Child._
Our modern anatomists and physicians are of different sentiments from
the ancients touching the woman's contributing seed for the formation of
the child, as well as the man; the ancients strongly affirming it, but
our modern authors being generally of another judgment. I will not make
myself a party to this controversy, but set down impartially, yet
briefly, the arguments on each side, and leave the judicious reader to
judge for himself.
Though it is apparent, say the ancients, that the seed of man is the
principal efficient and beginning of action, motion and generation, yet
the woman affords seed, and contributes to the procreation of the child,
it is evident from hence, that the woman had seminal vessels, which had
been given her in vain if she wanted seminal excretions; but since
nature forms nothing in vain, it must be granted that they were formed
for the use of the seed and procreation, and fixed in their proper
places, to operate and contribute virtue and efficiency to the seed; and
this, say they, is further proved from hence, that if women at years of
maturity use not copulation to eject their seed, they often fall into
strange diseases, as appears by young women and virgins, and also it
appears that, women are never better pleased than when they are often
satisfied this way, which argues, that the pleasure and delight, say
they, is double in women to what it is in men, for as the delight of men
in copulation consists chiefly in the emission of the seed, so women are
delighted, both in the emission of their own and the reception of the
man's.
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