Note 4 — A TREATISE ON MIDWIFERY. (continued 2)

It is evidently this universal influence of the Uterus over the whole animal system, in the female sex, that Plato has in view in that his description of it, which Mr. Smellie (introd. p. 15) calls odd and romantic, from his not making due allowance for the figurative stile of that florid author. Thus the diffusion of the energy of the uterus, Plato calls its “wandering up and down thro’ the body.” A power of activity which, towards conquering the otherwise natural coldness of the female constitution, nature would hardly give to the uterus merely to excite in women a desire, sanctified under due restrictions, by her favorite end, that of propagation, if she had not, at the same time, endowed that uterus with an instinct, beneficial by its influence in the preservation of the issue of that desire. And the real truth is, that there is something that would be prodigious, if any thing natural could be properly termed prodigious, in that supremely tender sensibility with which women in general are so strongly impressed towards one another in the case of lying-in. What are not their bowels on that occasion? It may not be here quite foreign to remark, in support of the characteristic importance of the uterus or the womb, that in the antient Saxon language the word Man or Mon equally signified one of the male or female sex, as Homo in Latin. But for distinction-sake the male was called Weapon-man, (not however for any offensive weapon or instrument in midwifery;) and the female Womb-man, or man with an uterus: from whence by contraction the word woman.