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CHAP. VIII. Of Monsters caused by the straitnesse of the wombe.
WEE are constrained to confesse by the event of things, that mon∣sters are bred and caused by the straitnesse of the wombe; for so * 1.1 apples hanging upon the trees, if before they come to just ripe∣nesse, they bee put into strait vessels, their growth is hindered. So some whelps which women take delight in, are hindered from any further growth by the littlenesse of the place in which they are kept. Who knowes not that the plants growing in the earth, are hindered from a longer progresse and propagation of their roots, by the opposition of a flint, or any other solid body, and therefore in such places are crooked, slender and weak, but on the other part, where they have free nourishment, to bee strait and strong? for seeing that by the opinion of Naturalists, the place is the forme of the thing pla∣ced; it is necessary that those things that are shut up in straiter spaces, prohibited of free motion, should be lessened, depraved and lamed.
Empedocles and Diphilus acknowledged three causes of monstrous births: The too great or small matter of the seed; the corruption of the seed; and depravation of growth by the straitnesse or figure of the womb: which they thought the chiefest of all; because they thought the case was such in naturall births, as in forming of metals and fusible things, of which statues being made, doe lesse expresse the things they be made for, if the moldes or formes into which the matter is poured, bee rough, sca∣brous, too strait, or otherwise faulty.