Page - 1491 - in The Complete Aristotle

then, as we have said, contribute to cause the difference between women and the other animals in this state, but the most important thing is this: in some animals the discharge corresponding to the catamenia is but small, and in some not visible at all, but in women it is greater than in any other animal, so that when this discharge ceases owing to pregnancy they are troubled (for if they are not pregnant they are afflicted with ailments whenever the catamenia do not occur); and they are more troubled as a rule at the beginning of pregnancy, for the embryo is able indeed to stop the catamenia but is too small at first to consume any quantity of the secretion; later on it takes up some of it and so alleviates the mother. In the other animals, on the contrary, the residual matter is but small and so corresponds with the growth of the foetus, and as the secretions which hinder nourishment are being consumed by the foetus the mother is in better bodily condition than usual. The same holds good also with aquatic animals and birds. If it ever happens that the body of the mother is no longer in good condition when the foetus is now becoming large, the reason is that its growth needs more nourishment than the residual matter supplies. (In some few women it happens that the body is in a better state during pregnancy; these are women in whose body the residual matter is small so that it is all used up along with the nourishment that goes to the foetus.) < div id=“section49” class=“section” title=“7”> 7 We must also speak of what is known as mola uteri, which occurs rarely in women but still is found sometimes during pregnancy. For they produce what is called a mola; it has happened before now to a woman, after she had had intercourse with her husband and supposed she had conceived, that at first the size of her belly increased and everything else happened accordingly, but yet when the time for birth came on, she neither bore a child nor was her size reduced, but she continued thus for three or four years until dysentery came on, endangering her life, and she produced a lump of flesh which is called mola. Moreover this condition may continue till old age and death. Such masses when expelled from the body become so hard that they can hardly be cut through even by iron. Concerning the cause of this phenomenon we have spoken in the Problems; the same thing happens to the embryo in the womb as to meats half cooked in roasting, and it is not due to heat, as some say, but rather to the weakness of the maternal heat. (For their nature seems to be incapable, and unable to perfect or to put the last touches to the process of generation. Hence it is that the mola remains in them till old age or at any rate 1491