Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
of the body. “
Friction on the penis and the movement of the whole
man cause the fluid in the body to grow warm: becoming diffuse and
agitated by the movement it produces a foam…
” (OG 1.2). This
physical emanation passes via the brain and spinal cord to reach
the testes. An identical process produces the female seed. “
In the
case of women, it is my contention that during intercourse the
vagina receives friction and the womb is disturbed, an irritation is
set up in the womb which produces pleasure and heat in the rest of
the body. A woman also emits something from her body
” (OG 4.1).
The mixture of the two seeds in the uterus causes conception,
but the quantities of seed coming from the two parents are not
identical for all the parts of the body, and quantitative dominance
between what has come from each parent determines the charac-
teristics of the new child. Thus to determine the sex: “
...both
partners alike contain both male and female sperm... (…)…the
resultant sex is determined by whichever sperm prevails in quantity
”
(OG 6.1). The same determination principle applies to all parts of
the body.
“If from any part of the father's body a greater quantity of sperm
is derived than from the corresponding part of the mother's body
the child will, in part, bear a closer resemblance to its father; and
vice versa”
(OG 8.1).
There are two aspects in this Hippocratic concept. The foam is
produced by the whole body. It replicates itself as a whole and it
is this whole which imprints its order. In this sense, it is a theory
which anticipates modern holism. In addition, this idea involves
material continuity of the body which persists through reproduction.
Each part replicates itself. The foam forming the seed contains
direct excrescences of each organ which are then amplified during
embryogenesis retaining the characteristics of the parent from
which they come. There is never any material interruption in the
succession of organisms. They reproduce directly, one from another,
the child from the whole parent (Fig. 32), a concept which has a
