Oh, I have to say that this entry is most entertaining, in a trainwreck sort of way.

Text Translation:

Only women have a womb; in it they conceive as in a small cup; but there are writers who assign a womb to either sex, often calling it venter, belly – and not just poets, but others also. The womb is called uterus because it is double and divides itself into two parts which bend in different and opposing directions like a ram’s horn; or because it is filled inside with a fetus. For this reason it is called uter, a bag, because it has something inside it, such as limbs and intestines. Paunch, aqualiculus, is properly the word for a pig’s belly. For this reason it is translated as venter, belly. It is called the matrix because the baby is generated in it. It fosters the semen it has received, and by cherishing it, turns it into flesh; and what it has turned into flesh, it separates into parts of the body. The vulva is so called as if it were a folding-door, that is, the door of the belly; either because it receives the semen or because the fetus goes forth from it.

The bladder, vesica, is so called as if it were a water-container; thus it is filled with urine collected from the kidneys, and is distended by the fluid. There is no need for this in birds. Urine is so called either because it burns, urere, or because it comes from the kidneys. Its appearance reveals future health or sickness. The fluid is commonly called lotium, because you use it to wash clothes clean, lotus.

Semen, seed, is so called because once scattered it is consumed either by the earth or by the womb, to produce either fruits or a fetus. For it is a liquor concocted from food and the body, which is spread through the veins and spinal cord. From there it is sweated out like bilgewater; it thickens in the kidneys and is ejaculated during intercourse, and taken up into the woman’s womb, by a sort of intestinal heat and the flow of menstrual blood, it is shaped in the body.

The menstrual flow is the superfluous blood of a woman. It is called menstrua from the cycle of the light of the moon which regularly brings about this flow. For the Greek word for ‘moon’ is mene; menstruation is also called muliebria, ‘womanly business’. For the woman is the only creature which menstruates.

When they come into contact with menstrual blood, crops do not put forth shoots, wine turns sour, grasses die, trees lose their fruit, iron is corrupted by rust, copper blackens, if dogs eat it they become rabid. Asphalt glue, which cannot be melted by fire or dissolved by water, when it is tainted by this blood, disintegrates by itself.

[Hey, Supervillain Blood! The word “asphalt” is derived from the late Middle English, in turn from French asphalte, based on Late Latin asphalton, asphaltum, which is the latinisation of the Greek ἄσφαλτος (ásphaltos, ásphalton), a word meaning “asphalt/bitumen/pitch”]

After many days of menstruation, the semen cannot generate, because there is no further flow of menstrual blood by which it can be moistened. Semen of thin consistency does not stick to the womanly parts and is unstable, for it has not the strength to adhere; likewise thick semen has not the power to generate, because it cannot mix with the woman’s blood, so dense is it. For this reason men and women become sterile, either through excessive density of the semen, or the blood, or excessive thinness.

For they say that a man’s heart is the first part to come into existence, because in it is all life and wisdom; then on the fortieth day, the whole body is complete, a fact gathered from abortions. Others say that the fetus takes its beginning from the head. For this reason we see in eggs that in the fetus of birds the eyes are the first things to grow. The fetus is so called because it is still being fostered, fovere, in the womb. The afterbirth, secunda, of the fetus is called folliculus, ‘little sack’; it is produced simultaneously with the baby and contains it. It is called secunda because when the baby comes forth, it follows, sequi. They say that children are born resembling their fathers, if the father’s semen is stronger. They resemble the mother if her seed is stronger; for this reason countenances have a similar appearance. Infants who have the face of both parents were conceived in an equal mix of their their paternal and maternal seed. They resemble grandparents and great-grandparents because, just as there are many seeds hidden in the earth, so there are seeds hidden in mankind, which give us the features of our ancestors.

From the paternal seed girls are born; from the maternal, boys; because each birth consists of a double seed, and when the greater of the two parts overcomes the other, it produces a similarity in sex. In our body certain things are created for a functional purpose, such as the intestines; some for utility and ornament, like the sensory organs on the face and the hands and feet on the body.

The usefulness of these parts is great and their appearance most seemly. Some are there for ornament only, like men’s nipples and the navel in both sexes. Some are there to distinguish one sex from the other, like the genitals, the long beard and the broad chest in men; the soft cheeks and narrow breast in women; but for conceiving and carrying babies their loins and hips are widened. What pertains to man and the parts of his body has already been said; now we will go on to the ages of his life.

Folio 90r – the parts of man’s body, continued.