Formation Of The Fetus

[nairi]

From An Invitation to Old English & Anglo-Saxon England by Bruce Mitchell:

 

The following text is taken from MS Cotton Tiberius A.iii, which is a miscellany containing interlinear glosses to the Rule of St Benedict and to Alfric's Colloquy, prayers, homilies, a collection of prognostics from dreams, the moon and calendars, and other items. This text is taken from folios 40v-41, and is "reminiscent of degenerate Greek medicine" (Singer):

 

A translation from the Old English text as done in class:

 

Here begins the explanation of man's birth, how he grows in his mother's womb. First the human being's brain is formed in his mother's womb, then in the sixth week, that brain is covered with membrane on the outside. In the second month the veins are formed and are divided into 365 shorter and longer ones and the blood then flows from the feet and up to the hands; and he is then divided into limbs and put together*. On the third month he is lifeless human being. In the fourth month his limbs are fixed. In the fifth month he is living and grows and his mother is witless (crazy); and when his ribs are developed then there is complicated pain when the child's body takes shape in her womb. In the sixth month he is furnished with skin and bones grow. In the seventh month the toes and the fingers grow. In the eighth month his breast organs heart and blood grow; and he is all firmly composed. In the ninth month the woman surely knows when she is ready to give birth. In the tenth month the woman does not escape with her life if that child is given birth to, because staying in the stomach is cause for a fatal illness, [which occurs] most often on Monday nights.

 

* The idea is that the limbs are formed from the brain and float around in the womb freely until the fourth month when they are fixed in their right place.

 

Now I also learned earlier that Mesopotamians, in particular Sumerians, believed that the male sperm was a human being already which only needed to be planted into the female womb to grow further.

 

My question is, how did Armenian medicine explain the growth and birth of a child? This goes for both before and after Christianity...

[Harut]

you should probably look for Mkhitar Heratsi for old Armenian medicine.