arer to
the testicles; this defect is, however, made good by the many intricate
windings to which those vessels are subject; for they divide themselves
into two branches of different size in the middle and the larger one
passes to the testicles.

The stones in women are very useful, for where they are defective, the
work of generation is at an end. For though those bladders which are on
the outer surface contain no seed, as the followers of Galen and
Hippocrates wrongly believed, yet they contain several eggs, generally
twenty in each testicle; one of which being impregnated by the animated
part of the man's seed in the act of copulation, descends through the
oviducts into the womb, and thus in due course of time becomes a living
child.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

_Of the Organs of Generation in Man._

Having given a description of the organs of generation in women, with
the anatomy of the fabric of the womb, I shall now, in order to finish
the first part of this treatise, describe the organs of generation in
men, and how they are fitted for the use for which Nature intended them.

The instrument of generation in men (commonly called the yard, in Latin,
_penis_, from _pendo_, to hang, because it hangs outside the belly), is
an organic part which consists of skin, tendons, veins, arteries, sinews
and great ligaments; and is long and round, and on the upper side
flattish, seated under the _os pubis_, and ordained by Nature partly for
the evacuation of urine, and partly for conveying the seed into the
womb; for which purpose it is full of small pores, through which the
seed passes into it, through the _vesicula seminalis_,[4] and discharges
the urine when they make water; besides the common parts, viz., the two
nervous bodies, the septum, the urethra, the glans, four muscles and the
vessels. The nervous bodies (so called) are surrounded with a thick
white, penetrable membrane, but their inner substance is spongy, and
consists chiefly of veins, arteries, and nervous fibres, interwoven like
a net. And when the nerves are filled with animal vigour and the
arteries with hot, eager blood, the penis becomes distended and erect;
also the neck of the _vesicula urinalis_,[5] but when the influx of
blood ceases, and when it is absorbed by the veins, the penis becomes
limp and flabby. Below those nervous bodies is the urethra, and whenever
they swell, it swells also. The penis has four