Page - 1486 - in The Complete Aristotle

with the embryos. The abnormal parts generally are attached near those they resemble, but sometimes at a distance because of the movement—taking place in the embryo, and especially because of the excess of material returning to that place whence it was taken away while retaining the form of that part whence it arose as a superfluity. In certain cases we find a double set of generative organs [one male and the other female]. When such duplication occurs the one is always functional but not the other, because it is always insufficiently supplied with nourishment as being contrary to Nature; it is attached like a growth (for such growths also receive nourishment though they are a later development than the body proper and contrary to Nature.) If the formative power prevails, both are similar; if it is altogether vanquished, both are similar; but if it prevail here and be vanquished there, then the one is female and the other male. (For whether we consider the reason why the whole animal is male or female, or why the parts are so, makes no difference.) When we meet with deficiency in such parts, e.g. an extremity or one of the other members, we must assume the same cause as when the embryo is altogether aborted (abortion of embryos happens frequently). Outgrowths differ from the production of many young in the manner stated before; monsters differ from these in that most of them are due to embryos growing together. Some however are also of the following kind, when the monstrosity affects greater and more sovereign parts, as for instance some monsters have two spleens or more than two kidneys. Further, the parts may migrate, the movements which form the embryo being diverted and the material changing its place. We must decide whether the monstrous animal is one or is composed of several grown together by considering the vital principle; thus, if the heart is a part of such a kind then that which has one heart will be one animal, the multiplied parts being mere outgrowths, but those which have more than one heart will be two animals grown together through their embryos having been confused. It also often happens even in many animals that do not seem to be defective and whose growth is now complete, that some of their passages may have grown together or others may have been diverted from the normal course. Thus in some women before now the os uteri has remained closed, so that when the time for the catamenia has arrived pain has attacked them, till either the passage has burst open of its own accord or the physicians have removed the impediment; some such cases have ended in death if the rupture has been made too violently or if it has been impossible to make it at all. In some boys on the other hand the end of the penis has not coincided with the end of the passage where the urine is voided, but the passage has ended below, so that 1486