CHAP. XLIX. Of Womens Monethly Flux or Courses.
* 1.1USually they call the flux of blood that issueth from the secret parts of women, Monthly Flowers or Courses, because it happeneth to them every month so long as they are in health. There be some which call them terms, because they return at their usual time. Many of the French men call it Sepmains, because in such as sit much, and are given to plentifull feeding, it endureth almost for the space of seven dayes. Some call them purgations, because that by this flux all a womans body is purged of superfluous humors. There be some also that call those fluxes, the Flowers, because that as in plants the flower buddeth out before the fruits; so in wo∣men kinde th••s fl••x goeth before the issue, or the conception thereof.
For the courses flow not before a woman be able to conceive; for how should the seed being cast into the womb have his nourishment and increase, and how should the childe have his nourish∣ment when it is formed of the seed,* 1.2 it this necessary humor were wanting in the womb? yet it may be some women may conceive without the flux of the courses: but that is in such as have so much or the ••••mor gathered together, as is wont to remain in those which are purged, although it be not so great a quantity that it may flow out, as it is recorded by Aristotle. But as it is in some very great, and in some very little, so it is in some seldom, and in some very often.
* 1.3There are some that are purged twice, and some thrice in a moneth, but it is altogether in those who have a great liver, large veins, and are filled and fed with many and greatly nourishing meats, which sit idlely at home all day, which having slept all night, do notwithstanding lie in bed sleep∣ing a great part of the day also, which live in a hot, moist, rainy and southerly air, which use warm baths of sweet waters and gentle frictions, which use and are greatly delighted with carnal copu∣lation: in these and such like women, the courses flow more frequently and abundantly.
* 1.4But contrariwise, those that have small and obscure veins, and those that have their bodies more furnished and big either with flesh or with fat, are more seldom purged, and also more sparingly, because that the s••perfluous quantity of blood useth to go into the habit of the body. Also tender, delicate and fair women are less purged than those that are brown, and endued with a more com∣pact flesh, because that by the rarity of their bodies, they suffer a greater wasting or dissipation of their substance by transpiration. Moreover, they are not so greatly purged with this kind of purgation, which have some other solemn or accustomed evacuation in any other place of their body, as by the nose or hemorrhoids.
* 1.5And as concerning their age, old women are purged when the Moon is old, and young women when the Moon is new, as it is thought. I think the cause thereof is, for that the Moon ruleth moist bodies; for by the variable motion thereof the Sea floweth and ebbeth; and bones, marrow and plants abound with their genital humor.
Therefore young people which have much blood, and more fluxible, and their bodies more fluxible, are soon moved unto a flux, although it be even in the first quarter of the Moons rising or increasing:* 1.6 but the humors of old women, because they wax stiff as it were with cold, and are not so abundant, and have more dense bodies and straighter vessels, are not so apt to a flux, nor do they so easily flow, except it be in the full of the Moon, or else in the decrease; that is to say, because the blood that is gathered in the full of the Moon falls from the body even of its own weight, for that by reason of the decreasing or wane of the Moon, this time of the moneth is more cold and moist.