The workes of that famous chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of Latine and compared with the French. by Th: Johnson

CHAP. VII. Of the generation of the navell.

AFter the woman hath conceived, to every one of the aforesaid emi∣nencies groweth presently another vessell, that is to say, a veine to the veine, and an artery to the artery: these soft and yet thin vessels, are fra∣med with a little thin membrane, which being spread under, sticketh to them, for to them it is in stead of a membrane, and a ligament and a tunicle or a defence, and it is doubled with the others, and made of the veine and ar∣tery of the navell, to compasse the navell. These new small vessels of the infant, with their orifices, doe answer directly one to one to the cotyledones or eminences of the womb, they are very swall and little, as it were the hairy fibres that grow upon roots that are in the earth, and when they have continued so a longer time, they are combi∣ned together, that of two they are made one vessell, until that by continuall connexi∣on, all those vessels go and degenerate into two other great vessels, called the umbi∣licall

vessels, or the vessels of the navell, because they do make the navell, and do en∣ter into the childs body by the hole of the navell. Here Galen doth admire the sin∣gular providence of God and Nature, because that in such a multitude of vessels, and * 1.1 in so long a passage or length that they go or are produced, the vein doth never con∣found it selfe nor stick to the artery, nor the artery to the veine, but every vessell joy∣neth it selfe to the vessell of its owne kinde. But the umbilicall veine or navell veine, entering into the body of the child, doth joyne it self presently to the hollow part of the liver, but the artery is divided into two, which joine themselves to the two iliack arteries along the sides of the bladder, & are presently covered with the peritonaum, & by the benefit thereof are annexed unto the parts which it goes unto. Those small veines and arteries are as it were the rootes of the child, but the veine and artery of the navell are as it were the body of the tree, to bring down the nutriment to nourish the child. For first we live in the wombe the life of a plant, and then next the life of a sensitive creature; and as the first tunicle of the child is called Chorion or Allantoides, so the other is called Amnios or Agnina, which doth compasse the seed or child about on every side. These membranes are most thin, yea for their thinnesse like unto the spiders web, woven one upon another, and also connexed in many places by the ex∣tremities of certaine small and hairy substances, which at length by the adjunction of * 1.2 their like do get strength; wherby you may understand, what is the cause why by di∣vers and violent motions of the mother in going and dancing or leaping, and also of the infant in the wombe, those membranes are not almost broken. For they are so conjoyned by the knots of those hairie substances, that betweene them nothing, neither the urine nor the sweate can come, as you may plainely and evidently per∣ceive in the dissection of a womans body that is great with child, not depending on any other mans opinion, be it never so old or inveterate: yet the strength of those membranes is not so great but that they may bee soone broken in the birth by the kicking of the child.

Notes

• * 1.1

  The veine never joyneth it selfe with the artery.
• * 1.2

  Hippocrates cal∣leth all the membranes that compasse the infant in the wombe, accor∣ding to the judgement of 〈◊〉〈◊〉 in his booke de usu partium, by the name of the se∣cundines.