should be maintained
and kept up.

Q. Why do such as use it often take less delight in it than those who
come to it seldom? A. 1. The passages of the seed are over large and
wide; and therefore it makes no stay there, which would cause the
delight. 2. Through often evacuation there is little seed left, and
therefore no delight. 3. Because such, instead of seed there is cast out
blood, undigested and raw, or some other watery substance, which is not
hot, and therefore affords no delight.

_Of the Seed of Man and Beasts._

Q. How, and of what cometh the seed of man? A. Some philosophers and
physicians say, it is superfluous humours; others say, that the seed is
pure blood, flowing from the brain, concocted and whitened in the
testicles; but sweat, urine, spittle, phlegm, choler, and the like, and
blood dispersed throughout the whole body, come chiefly from the heart,
liver and brain, because those parts are greatly weakened by casting
seed; and therefore it appears that frequent carnal copulation is not
good.

Q. Why is a man's seed white, and a woman's red? A. It is white in men
by reason of great heat and quick digestion, because it is rarefied in
the testicles; but a woman's is red, because her terms corrupt the
undigested blood, and it hath its colour.

Q. How come females to have monthly courses? A. Because they are cold in
respect of men, and because all their nourishment cannot be converted
into blood, a great part of which turns to menses, which are monthly
expelled.

Q. For what reason do the menses not come down in females before the age
of thirteen? A. Because young women are hot, and digest all their
nourishment.

Q. For what reason do they leave off at about fifty? A. Because nature
is then so exhausted, they cannot expel them by reason of weakness.

Q. Why have not breeding women the menses? A. Because that then they
turn into milk, and into the nourishment of the child: for if a woman
with child have them, it is a sign that she will miscarry.

Q. Why are they termed _menstrua_, from the word _mensis_, a month? A.
Because it is a space of time that measures the moon, as she ends her
course in twenty-nine days, and fourteen hours.

Q. Why do they continue longer with some than others, as with some six
or seven, but commonly with all three days? A. The first are cold,
therefore they increase most in them, and consequently are longer
expelling; other women are hot, and therefore have fewer and