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CHAP. LIIII. The signes of the approaching of the menstruall fluxe.
WHen the monethly fluxe first approacheth, the dugges itch and become more swollen and hard than they were wont, the woman is more desi∣rous of copulation, by reason of the ebullition of the provoked blood, * 1.1 and the acrimony of the blood that remaineth, her voice becommeth bigger, her secret parts itch, burne, swell, and waxe red. If they stay long, shee hath paine in her loynes and head, nauseousnesse and vomiting troubleth the stomacke: notwithstanding, if those matters which flow together in the wombe, either of their owne nature, or by corruption, be cold, they loath the act of genera∣tion, by reason that the wombe waxeth feeble through sluggishnesse and watery hu∣mours filling the same, and it floweth by the secret parts very softly. Those maides that are marriageable, although they have the menstruall fluxe very well, yet they * 1.2 are troubled with head ache, nauseousnesse, and often vomiting, want of appetite, longing, an ill habite of body, difficulty of breathing, trembling of the heart, swou∣ning, melancholy, fearfull dreames, watching, with sadnesse and heavinesse, because that the genitall parts burning & itching, they imagine the act of generation, where∣by it commeth to passe that the seminall matter, either remaining in the testicles in great abundance, or else powred into the hollownesse of the womb, by the tickling * 1.3 of the genitalls, is corrupted, and acquireth a venemous quality, and causeth such like accidents as happens in the suffocation of the wombe.
Maides that live in the country are not so troubled with those diseases, because there is no such lying in wait for their maiden-heads, and also they live sparingly and hardly, and spend their time in continuall labour. You may see many maides so full of juice, that it runneth in great abundance, as if they were not menstruall, into their dugges, and is there converted into milke, which they have in as great quantity as nurses, as we read it recorded by Hippocrates. If a woman which is neither great with * 1.4 child, nor hath born children, hath milke, she wants the menstruall fluxes; whereby you may understand that that conclusion is not good which affirmeth that a woman which hath milke in her breasts, either to be delivered of childe, or to be great with childe: for Cardanus writeth that hee knew one Antony Buzus at Genua, who being * 1.5 thirty yeeres of age, had so much milk in his breasts as was sufficient to nurse a child; for the breeding and efficient cause of milke proceeds not onely from the engrafted faculty of the glandulous substance, but much rather from the action of the mans * 1.6 seed; for proofe whereof you may see many men that have very much milk in their breasts, and many women that almost have no milke, unlesse they receive mans seed. Also women that are strong and lusty like unto men, which the Latines call Viragi∣nes, that is to say, whose seed commeth unto a manly nature, when the flowers are stopped, concoct the blood, and therefore when it wanteth passage forth, by the likenesse of the substance it is drawne into the duggs, and becommeth perfect milk: those that have the flowers plentifully and continually for the space of foure or five daies, are better purged and with more happy successe than those that have them for a longer time.