Because young women are hot, and digest all their
nourishment.
Q. For what reason do they leave off at about fifty? A. Because nature
is then so exhausted, they cannot expel them by reason of weakness.
Q. Why have not breeding women the menses? A. Because that then they
turn into milk, and into the nourishment of the child: for if a woman
with child have them, it is a sign that she will miscarry.
Q. Why are they termed _menstrua_, from the word _mensis_, a month? A.
Because it is a space of time that measures the moon, as she ends her
course in twenty-nine days, and fourteen hours.
Q. Why do they continue longer with some than others, as with some six
or seven, but commonly with all three days? A. The first are cold,
therefore they increase most in them, and consequently are longer
expelling; other women are hot, and therefore have fewer and are sooner
expelled.
Q. Are the menses which are expelled, and those by which the child is
engendered, all one? A. No, because the one are unclean, and unfit for
that purpose; but the other very pure and clear, therefore the fittest
for generation.
Q. Why have not women their menses all one and the same time, but some
in the new moon, some in the full, and others at the wane? A. From their
several complexions, and though all women (in respect of men) are
phlegmatic, yet some are more sanguine than others, some more choleric;
and as the moon hath her quarters, so have women their complexions; the
first sanguine, the second choleric.
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