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. V. What Women ought to marry with what men, that they may have Children.

IN respect of married Women that prove Childless, Hypocrates adviseth this experiment to be tried, to know whether the defect be on the Womans part, or on her Husbands, which is to make her suffumigations with Incense, or Storax, with a Garment close wrap∣ped about her, which may hang down on the ground, in such sort, that no vapor, or fume may issue out, and if within a while after she feel the savour of the Incense in her mouth, she may conclude that the bar∣renness comes not through her own defect, but through her husbands; for as much as the fumes found the pas∣sages open, whereby it pierced up to the Nostrils: But although this proof perform that effect which Hippocra∣tes speaketh of, namely, the piercing up to the inner part of the mouth; yet this is no infallible argument of the Husbands barrenness, nor of the fruitfulness of the Wife: Since want of Children may arise through an unapt disposition in them both, in respect of the correspondency of qualities, for it hath oftentimes hap∣ned that a man who could not have Children by one

wife, hath had them by another; the like also hath befallen Women. What the correspondency should be, which the man and wife ought to bear each to o∣ther, is expressed by Hypocrates in these words. If the hot answer not the cold, and the dry the moist, with measure and quantity; that is, if there meet not in the Womb two Seeds, the one hot, the other cold, the one dry, the other moist, extended in equal degree, there can be no generation: For so marvellous a work as the formation of Man could not be perform'd, without a proportionable commixture of seeds, which could not be, if the mans seed and the womans were both of the same temperature. To exemplify what I have said, it is to be concluded, that a woman who is wily, ill-condition'd, shrill-voiced, lean, swarthy-co∣loured, and deformed, (which are the signs of cold, and moist in the first degree) may conceive by a man who is ignorant, good natured, sweet voic'd, corpu∣lent, having little hair, a well-coloured face, and a hand∣some body, which are the signs of hot and dry in the first degree; a woman cold and moist in the second degree, in regard she retaineth a mean in all those signs above-mentioned is most like to be fruitful, be∣cause she comes nearest in proportion to men of each several temperature: But from the first of these Unions or Conjoynings of man and woman, are most likely to issue the wisest children, because the dryness of the mother, correcteth and amendeth the defect of the fa∣ther. Moreover, it is requisite that women be dryed by a mature age, and not marry over young; for from thence it comes to pass most commonly, that chil∣dren prove shallow, and indued with little wit.