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To make quite sure of this, if anybody happens to kill a porcupine big with young while the girl is undergoing her period of separation, the foetus is given to her, and she lets it slide down between her shirt and her body so as to fall on the ground like an infant. Here the imitation of childbirth is a piece of homoeopathic or imitative magic designed to facilitate the effect which it simulates.
Ryan says: "Theologians of the church of Rome made a distinction between the inanimate and the animate foetus to which the soul is added by the creation of God, and adopted the opinions of some of the old philosophers, more particularly those of Aristotle, as to animation in the male and female, but the canon law altogether negatived the doctrine of the Stoics, for Innocent II condemned the following proposition: "'It seems probable that the foetus does not possess a rational soul as long as it is in the womb, and only begins to possess it when born, and consequently in no abortion is homicide committed. Sextus V inflicted severe penalties for the crime of abortion at any period; these were in some degree mitigated by Gregory XIV, who, however, still held that those producing the abortion of an animated foetus should be subject to them, viz., and excommunication reserved to the bishop and also an 'irregularity' reserved to the Pope himself for absolution."
Five days after impregnation the gland is about 2 cm. in diameter. Nine days after impregnation the glands have grown so much that the whole inner surface of the skin of the abdomen is covered with a thin layer of gland tissue. In six cases by injecting subcutaneously extracts of foetus tissue Starling and Lane-Claypon obtained a certain amount of growth of the milk glands.
Licetus! had I been blest with a foetus five inches long and a half, like thee Fate might have done her worst. Still, brother Toby, there was one cast of the dye left for our child after all O Tristram! Tristram! Tristram! We will send for Mr. Yorick, said my uncle Toby. You may send for whom you will, replied my father.
These eighteen evil spirits fond of meat and wine, and others of the same kind, invariably take up their abode in the lying-in-room for ten days. And that mother of the Gandharvas takes away the foetus, and for this reason, conception in woman turns out to be abortive.
Shall the soul that was ready to lodge in this woman's foetus go back again into space? Locke makes the sound observation, about monsters, that one must not attribute immortality to the exterior of a body; that the form has nothing to do with it. This immortality, he says, is no more attached to the form of his face or his chest, than to the way his beard is dressed or his coat cut.
In order to overcome the friction between the foetus and the wall of the maternal passages, these parts are lubricated by the fluids that escape from the "water bags." If birth is prolonged and the passages become dry, birth is retarded. The hair offers some resistance in a posterior presentation.
The foetus forms itself in the animal, and a thousand other wonders of nature are produced by a certain instinct that God has placed there, that is by virtue of divine preformation, which has made these admirable automata, adapted to produce mechanically such beautiful effects.
The mother places the mouth, of what is little more than a foetus, to her teat; and there it remains till it is able to go alone. The pouch covers the teats, and serves to protect the young, while the process of development is going on. Even after the little ones are able to run about, they continue to use this singular nest as a place of repose, and a refuge in case of attack by an enemy!
To this organ the growing foetus is moored by a species of cable, the Umbilical Cord. This cord, also made up mainly of blood vessels, carries the blood of the foetus to and from the Placenta, absorbing it through the thin walls which separate it from the mother's blood. Only through her blood can the mother influence the child, since the Umbilical Cord contains no nerves.