bottom of
the womb usually about eight inches; but the length of the body of the
womb alone, does not exceed three; the breadth thereof is near about the
same, and of the thickness of the little finger, when the womb is not
pregnant, but when the woman is with child, it becomes of a prodigious
greatness, and the nearer she is to delivery, the more the womb is
extended.

It is not without reason then, that nature (or the God of Nature) has
made the womb of a membranous substance; for thereby it does the easier
open to conceive, is gradually dilated by the growth of the foetus or
young one, and is afterwards contracted or closed again, to thrust forth
both it and the after-burden, and then to retire to its primitive seat.
Hence also it is enabled to expel any noxious humours, which may
sometimes happen to be contained within it.

Before I have done with the womb, which is the field of generation, and
ought, therefore, to be the more particularly taken care of (for as the
seeds of plants can produce no plants, nor sprig unless grown in ground
proper to excite and awaken their vegetative virtue so likewise the seed
of man, though potentially containing all the parts of the child, would
never produce so admissible an effect, if it were not cast into that
fruitful field of nature, the womb) I shall proceed to a more particular
description of its parts, and the uses for which nature has designed
them.

The womb, then, is composed of various similar parts, that is of
membranes, veins, arteries and nerves. Its membranes are two and they
compose the principal parts of the body, the outermost of which ariseth
from the peritoneum or caul, and is very thin, without it is smooth, but
within equal, that it may the better cleave to the womb, as it is
fleshier and thicker than anything else we meet with within the body,
when the woman is not pregnant, and is interwoven with all sorts of
fibres or small strings that it may the better suffer the extension of
the child, and the water caused during pregnancy, and also that it may
the easier close again after delivery.

The veins and arteries proceed both from the hypogastric and the
spermatic vessels, of which I shall speak by and by; all these are
inserted and terminated in the proper membranes of the womb. The
arteries supply it with food and nourishment, which being brought
together in too great a quantity, sweats through the substance of it,
and distils as it were a dew at the bott