The compleat midwife's practice enlarged in the most weighty and high concernments of the birth of man containing a perfect directory or rules for midwives and nurses : as also a guide for women in their conception, bearing and nursing of children from the experience of our English authors, viz., Sir Theodore Mayern, Dr. Chamberlain, Mr. Nich. Culpeper ... : with instructions of the Queen of France's midwife to her daughter ... / by John Pechey ... ; the whole illustrated with copper plates.

CHAP. VII. Of the preparing Vessels in Women.

THE Spermatick Preparing Ves∣sels, are two Veins, and two Arteries, differing not at all from those of men, either in the number, original, action, or use, but only in their bigness, and the manner of their in∣sertion. For as to their number, there are so many veins, and so many Arteries as in men. They arise also from the same place as in men; that is to say, the right, from the trunck of the hollow vein descending; the left, from the left Emulgent.

There are two Arteries also, on both sides one, which grow from the Aorta; these both bring vital blood for the work of Generation.

As to the Longitude and Latitude of these Vessels, they are narrower and shorter in Women; only where they are wrinckled, they are much more wreathed and contorted than in men; for, the way being shor∣ter in women than in men, Nature required, for stretch∣ing out these vessels, that they should be more wrinck∣led and crankled than in men, that the blood might stay there in greater quantity, for preparation of the Seed.

These vessels in Women are car∣ried with an oblique course through the small guts to the Stones, being

wrapt up in fatter membranes; but in the mid-way they are divided into two branches, whereof the greater branch goes to the Stone, constituting the va∣rious or winding body, and those wonderful inoscu∣lations, the lesser branch ends in the womb; in the sides of which it is scattered up and down, and chief∣ly at the higher part of the bottom of the womb, for nourishment of the Womb, and of the birth; and that some part of the flowers may be purged out through those Vessels: now because the Stones of Women are seated near the womb, for that cause these vessels fall not from the Peritonaeum, neither make they such passages as in men, neither reach they to the Share-bone.

The use of these Spermatic Vessels, is to minister to the generation of Seed, according to the ancient Doctrine; but to the nutrition of the Eggs in the Stones, according to the new, and for the nourish∣ment of the Foetus, and of the solid parts, and the expurgation of the courses; in as much as blood is convey'd by the Arteries to all those parts, to which their Ramifications come, in which parts they leave what is to be separated, according to the law of Na∣ture, the remaining blood returning by the Veins.

Notes

• The Vessels.
• The Insertion of the vessels.