Читать книгу The Female Physician онлайн

91 страница из 123

YEA, and farther yet, many Learned Authors^[43] testify by divers Examples (of Cajetava, Æmilia, &c.) that Women have been turn’d into Men: Which some would persuade us to believe, to be an Effect of the Force of a vehement IMAGINATION, acting upon the Soul, with which it is of a near Affinity, beyond all the Power of Sense.

AS to this Point, I am no ways to question the Veracity of what so many excellent Men have confirmed; but (granting it to be so) I think we may find more probable Reasons for it, than all the Powers of IMAGINATION, how great soever and marvellous they may be: Whereof I shall mention That, which seems to be the most rational Cause; viz. An extinguish’d or latent forming Faculty^[44], which (however) sometimes has exerted itself again, like the Blazing of a raked or resuscitated Fire.

FOR as our Teeth take their Beginning in the Womb, but are perfected without, as Bartholomæus Eustachius teacheth; and as the Teeth, call’d Dentes sapientiæ, are generated, and break out, even after the 30th Year of our Age: So it may be, that the virile Genitals have been imperfectly begun in the Womb, and that this forming Faculty has only perfected them by little and little; so that at last they have sprung forth and appear’d, after shaking off the Pudendum. And consequently such Women as Those (upon Dancing-Bouts, or the like, when the Blood and natural Heat had been strongly exagitated) have turned into Men.