The Retentive Faculty

Nutrition occurs by an alteration or assimilation of that which nourishes to that which receives nourishment,299

Every part of the animal has a faculty which is assimilative and nutritive.

A sufficient supply of the matter which the part being nourished makes into nutriment for itself is ensured by virtue of another faculty which naturally attracts its proper juice [humour] that that juice is proper to each part which is adapted for assimilation, and that the faculty which attracts the juice is called, by reason of its activity, attractive or epispastic.300

Assimilation is preceded by adhesion.

This, again, by presentation,301 the latter stage being, as one might say, the end or goal of the activity corresponding to the attractive faculty.

For the actual bringing up of nutriment from the veins into each of the parts takes place through the activation of the attractive faculty,302 whilst to have been finally brought up and presented to the part is the actual end for which we desired such an activity; it is attracted in order that it may be presented.

After this, considerable time is needed for the nutrition of the animal; whilst a thing may be even rapidly attracted, on the other hand to become adherent, altered, and entirely assimilated to the part which is being nourished and to become a part of it, cannot take place suddenly, but requires a considerable amount of time.

But if the nutritive juice, so presented, does not remain in the part, but withdraws to another one, and keeps flowing away, and constantly changing and shifting its position, neither adhesion nor complete assimilation will take place in any of them.

Here too, then, the [animal’s] nature has need of some other faculty for ensuring a prolonged stay of the presented juice at the part, and this not a faculty which comes in from somewhere outside but one which is resident in the part which is to be nourished. This faculty, again, in view of its activity our predecessors were obliged to call retentive.

Thus our argument has clearly shown303 the necessity for the genesis of such a faculty, and whoever has an appreciation of logical sequence must be firmly persuaded from what we have said that, if it be laid down and proved by previous demonstration that Nature is artistic and solicitous for the animal’s welfare, it necessarily follows that she must also possess a faculty of this kind.

Chapter 2: The Retentive Faculty

In certain parts of the body, the retentive faculty is so obvious.

Its operation is sometime obvious, sometimes not.

It is most obvious in the largest and hollowest organs such as the stomach and the womb or uterus.306

What prevents us, then, from taking up these first and considering their activities, conducting the enquiry on our own persons in regard to those activities which are obvious without dissection, and, in the case of those which are more obscure, dissecting animals which are near to man;307 not that even animals unlike him will not show, in a general way, the faculty in question, but because in this manner we may find out at once what is common to all and what is peculiar to ourselves, and so may become more resourceful in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

The stomach retains the food until it has quite digested it. The uterus retains the embryo until it brings it to completion.

Chapter 3: The Uterus

We can detect the retentive faculty in the uterus more clearly in proportion to the longer duration of its activity as compared with that of the stomach.

For, as we know, it takes nine months in most women for the foetus to attain maturity in the womb, this organ having its neck quite closed, and entirely surrounding the embryo together with the chorion. Further, it is the utility of the function which determines the closure of the os and the stay of the foetus in the uterus. For it is not casually nor without reason that Nature has made the uterus capable of contracting upon, and of retaining the embryo, but in order that the latter may arrive at a proper size.

When, therefore, the object for which the uterus brought its retentive faculty into play has been fulfilled, it then stops this faculty and brings it back to a state of rest, and employs instead of it another faculty hitherto quiescent—the propulsive faculty. In this case again the quiescent and active states are both determined by utility; when this calls, there is activity; when it does not, there is rest.

Here, then, once more, we must observe well the Art [artistic tendency] of Nature—how she has not merely placed in each organ the capabilities of useful activities, but has also fore-ordained the times both of rest and movement. For when everything connected with the pregnancy proceeds properly, the eliminative faculty remains quiescent as though it did not exist, but if anything goes wrong in connection either with the chorion or any of the other membranes or with the foetus itself, and its completion is entirely despaired of, then the uterus no longer awaits the nine-months period, but the retentive faculty forthwith ceases and allows the heretofore inoperative faculty to come into action. Now it is that something is done—in fact, useful work effected—by the eliminative or propulsive faculty (for so it, too, has been called, receiving, like the rest, its names from the corresponding activities).

Further, our theory can, I think, demonstrate both together; for seeing that they succeed each other, and that the one keeps giving place to the other according as utility demands, it seems not unreasonable to accept a common demonstration also for both. Thus it is the work of the retentive faculty to make the uterus contract upon the foetus at every point, so that, naturally enough, when the midwives palpate it, the os is found to be closed, whilst the pregnant women themselves, during the first days—and particularly on that on which conception takes place—experience a sensation as if the uterus were moving and contracting upon itself. Now, if both of these things occur—if the os closes apart from inflammation or any other disease, and if this is accompanied by a feeling of movement in the uterus—then the women believe that they have received the semen which comes from the male, and that they are retaining it.

Herophilus308 writes that up to the time of labour the os uteri will not admit so much as the tip of a probe, that it no longer opens to the slightest degree if pregnancy has begun—that, in fact, it dilates more widely at the times of the menstrual flow.

With him are in agreement all the others who have applied themselves to this subject; and particularly Hippocrates, who was the first of all physicians and philosophers to declare that the os uteri closes during pregnancy and inflammation, albeit in pregnancy it does not depart from its own nature, whilst in inflammation it becomes hard.

In the case of the opposite (the eliminative) faculty, the os opens, whilst the whole fundus approaches as near as possible to the os, expelling the embryo as it does so; and along with the fundus the contiguous parts—which form as it were a girdle round the whole organ—co-operate in the work; they squeeze upon the embryo and propel it bodily outwards.

In many women who exercise such a faculty immoderately, violent pains cause forcible prolapse of the whole womb; here almost the same thing happens as frequently occurs in wrestling-bouts and struggles, when in our eagerness to overturn and throw others we are ourselves upset along with them; for similarly when the uterus is forcing the embryo forward it sometimes becomes entirely prolapsed, and particularly when the ligaments connecting it with the spine happen to be naturally lax.309

A wonderful device of Nature’s also is this—that, when the foetus is alive, the os uteri is closed with perfect accuracy, but if it dies, the os at once opens up to the extent which is necessary for the foetus to make its exit.

The midwife, however, does not make the parturient woman get up at once and sit down on the [obstetric] chair, but she begins by palpating the os as it gradually dilates, and the first thing she says is that it has dilated “enough to admit the little finger,” then that “it is bigger now,” and as we make enquiries from time to time, she answers that the size of the dilatation is increasing. And when it is sufficient to allow of the transit of the foetus,310 she then makes the patient get up from her bed and sit on the chair, and bids her make every effort to expel the child. Now, this additional work which the patient does of herself is no longer the work of the uterus but of the epigastric muscles, which also help us in defaecation and micturition.