On the Nobility and Excellence of the Female Sex

ON THE NOBILITY AND EXCELLENCE

...woman, for that sacred duty of procreation (as is evident to all); for she is capable of this at ten years of age or even younger, whereas a man reaches this power much later. Moreover, it is obscure to no one that among all fruit-bearing creatures, it is only the woman who—even after she is pregnant and has begun to carry—retains a womb original: "uterū" that is inclined again toward the work of renewal not long after she has been released by childbirth. Her vessel (which they call the womb) is so inspired by human conception that it is sometimes recorded that a woman has conceived without intercourse.

Averroes, Book 2 of The Colliget Averroes (1126–1198) was a famous Andalusian philosopher and physician. His Colliget was a foundational medical text in Renaissance universities. For so that natural philosopher recorded in his literary monuments concerning a certain woman who absorbed male semen that had been discharged in a bath.

To this is added another stupendous miracle of nature: that a pregnant woman, if driven by her cravings Agrippa is describing "pica," the psychological or physiological urge to eat non-food items during pregnancy., may feed with impunity on undercooked meats and raw fish, and not infrequently on coals, mud, stones, even metals and poisons; she digests many such things without harm and converts them into health-giving nourishment for the body.

How many miracles beyond these nature rejoices to produce in women, no one will wonder who has read through the volumes of philosophers and physicians; of these, I will submit only one example which is readily at hand. Regarding menstrual blood: besides the fact that it liberates one from quartan fevers, from rabies original: "hydrophorbia", from the falling sickness original: "morbo comitiali" — a historical term for epilepsy., from elephantiasis, from melancholic impressions, from mania, and many most pernicious diseases of that kind, it also effects many other things no less worthy of admiration. Among other wonders, it even extinguishes fires, calms storms, averts the dangers of the waves, drives away all harmful things, dissolves witchcraft, and puts evil spirits original: "cacodæmones" to flight. Regarding those things which...

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