rooked and sharp, rigid or pointed, like those of a
young chicken hatched in the beginning of spring. And being a female, it
wanted nails upon the joints of the fingers; upon which, from the
masculous cartilaginous matter of the skin, nails that are very smooth
do come, and by degrees harden; she had, instead of nails, a thin skin
or film. As for her toes, there were no signs of nails upon them,
wanting the heat which was expanded to the fingers from the nearness of
the heart. All this was considered, and above all, one gentlewoman of
quality that assisted, affirming that she had been the mother of
nineteen children, and that divers of them had been born and lived at
seven months, though within the seventh month. For in such cases, the
revolution of the month ought to be observed, which perfects itself in
four bare weeks, or somewhat less than twenty-eight days; in which space
of the revolution, the blood being agitated by the force of the moon,
the courses of women flow from them; which being spent, and the matrix
cleansed from the menstruous blood which happens on the fourth day,
then, if a man on the seventh day lie with his wife, the copulation is
most natural, and then the conception is best: and the child thus
begotten may be born in the seventh month and prove very healthful. So
that on this report, the supposed father was pronounced innocent; the
proof that he was 100 miles distant all that month in which the child
was begotten; as for the mother she strongly denied that she knew the
father, being forced in the dark; and so, through fear and surprise, was
left in ignorance."

As for coition, it ought not to be used unless the parties be in health,
lest it turn to the disadvantage of the children so begotten, creating
in them, through the abundance of ill humours, divers languishing
diseases. Wherefore, health is no better discerned than by the genitals
of the man; for which reasons midwives, and other skilful women, were
formerly wont to see the testicles of children, thereby to conjecture
their temperature and state of body; and young men may know thereby the
signs and symptoms of death; for if the cases of the testicles be loose
and feeble, which are the proofs of life, are fallen, but if the secret
parts are wrinkled and raised up, it is a sign that all is well, but
that the event may exactly answer the prediction, it is necessary to
consider what part of the body the disease possesseth; for if it chance
to b