other reason he is
silent. Democritus, that the parts common to both sexes are engendered
indifferently; but the peculiar parts by the one that is more powerful.
Hippo, that if the spermatic faculty be more effectual, the male, if the
nutritive aliment, the female is generated.

CHAPTER VIII. BY WHAT MEANS IT IS THAT MONSTROUS BIRTHS ARE EFFECTED.

Empedocles believes that monsters receive their origination from the
abundance or defect of seed, or from its division into parts which are
superabundant, or from some disturbance in the motion, or else that
there is an error by a lapse into an unsuitable receptacle; and thus he
presumes he hath given all the causes of monstrous conceptions. Strato,
that it comes through addition, subtraction, or transposition of the
seed, or the distension or inflation of the matrix. And some physicians
say that the matrix suffers distortion, being distended with wind.

CHAPTER IX. HOW IT COMES TO PASS THAT A WOMAN'S TOO FREQUENT
CONVERSATION WITH A MAN HINDERS CONCEPTION.

Diocles the physician says that either no genital sperm is projected,
or, if there be, it is in a less quantity than nature requires, or
there is no prolific faculty in it; or there is a deficiency of a
due proportion of heat, cold, moisture, and dryness; or there is a
resolution of the generative parts. The Stoics attribute sterility to
the obliquity of the yard, by which means it is not able to ejaculate
in a due manner, or to the unproportionable magnitude of the parts,
the matrix being so contracted as not to have a capacity to receive.
Erasistratus assigns it to the womb's being more callous or more
carneous, thinner or smaller, than nature does require.

CHAPTER X. WHENCE IT IS THAT ONE BIRTH GIVES TWO OR THREE CHILDREN.

Empedocles affirms, that the superabundance of sperm and the division of
it causes the bringing forth of two or three infants. Asclepiades,
that it is performed from the excellent quality of the sperm, after the
manner that from the root of one barleycorn two or three stalks do grow;
sperm that is of this quality is the most prolific. Erasistratus, that
superfetation may happen to women as to irrational creatures; for, if
the womb be well purged and very clean, then there can be divers births.
The Stoics, that it ariseth from the various receptacles that are in the
womb: when the seed illapses into the first and second of them at once,
then there are conceptions upon conception; an