are sooner
expelled.

Q. Are the menses which are expelled, and those by which the child is
engendered, all one? A. No, because the one are unclean, and unfit for
that purpose; but the other very pure and clear, therefore the fittest
for generation.

Q. Why have not women their menses all one and the same time, but some
in the new moon, some in the full, and others at the wane? A. From their
several complexions, and though all women (in respect of men) are
phlegmatic, yet some are more sanguine than others, some more choleric;
and as the moon hath her quarters, so have women their complexions; the
first sanguine, the second choleric.

Q. Why do women easily conceive after their menses? A. Because the womb
being cleansed, they are better prepared for conception.

Q. Why do women look pale when they first have their menses upon them?
A. Because the heat goes from the outward parts of the body to the
inward, to help nature to expel their terms, which deprivation of heat
doth cause a paleness in the face. Or, because that flux is caused of
raw humours, which, when they run, make the face colourless.

Q. Why do they at that time abhor their meat? A. Because nature labours
more to expel their terms than digest; and, therefore, if they should
eat, their food would remain raw in the stomach.

Q. Why are some women barren and do not conceive? A. 1. It proceeds
sometimes from the man who may be of a cold nature, so that his seed is
unfit for generation. 2. Because it is waterish, and so doth not stay in
the womb. 3. By reason that the seed of them both hath not a like
proportion, as if the man be melancholy and the woman sanguine, or the
man choleric and the woman phlegmatic.

Q. Why do fat women seldom conceive? A. Because they have a slippery
womb, and the seed will not stay in it. Or, because the mouth of the
matrix is very strait, and the seed cannot enter it, or, if it does, it
is so very slowly that it grows cold and unfit for generation.

Q. Why do those of a hot constitution seldom conceive? A. Because the
seed in them is extinguished or put out, as water cast into fire;
whereof we find that women who vehemently desire the flesh seldom
conceive.

Q. Why are whores never with child? A. By reason of divers seeds, which
corrupt and spoil the instruments of conception, for it makes them so
slippery, that they cannot retain seed. Or, else, it is because one
man's seed destroys another's, so neither is good for gene