Q. Why do women easily conceive after their menses? A. Because the womb
being cleansed, they are better prepared for conception.
Q. Why do women look pale when they first have their menses upon them?
A. Because the heat goes from the outward parts of the body to the
inward, to help nature to expel their terms, which deprivation of heat
doth cause a paleness in the face. Or, because that flux is caused of
raw humours, which, when they run, make the face colourless.
Q. Why do they at that time abhor their meat? A. Because nature labours
more to expel their terms than digest; and, therefore, if they should
eat, their food would remain raw in the stomach.
Q. Why are some women barren and do not conceive? A. 1. It proceeds
sometimes from the man who may be of a cold nature, so that his seed is
unfit for generation. 2. Because it is waterish, and so doth not stay in
the womb. 3. By reason that the seed of them both hath not a like
proportion, as if the man be melancholy and the woman sanguine, or the
man choleric and the woman phlegmatic.
Q. Why do fat women seldom conceive? A. Because they have a slippery
womb, and the seed will not stay in it. Or, because the mouth of the
matrix is very strait, and the seed cannot enter it, or, if it does, it
is so very slowly that it grows cold and unfit for generation.
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