)
7
We must also speak of what is known as mola uteri, which occurs
rarely in women but still is found sometimes during pregnancy. For
they produce what is called a mola; it has happened before now to a
woman, after she had had intercourse with her husband and supposed she
had conceived, that at first the size of her belly increased and
everything else happened accordingly, but yet when the time for
birth came on, she neither bore a child nor was her size reduced,
but she continued thus for three or four years until dysentery came
on, endangering her life, and she produced a lump of flesh which is
called mola. Moreover this condition may continue till old age and
death. Such masses when expelled from the body become so hard that
they can hardly be cut through even by iron. Concerning the cause of
this phenomenon we have spoken in the Problems; the same thing happens
to the embryo in the womb as to meats half cooked in roasting, and
it is not due to heat, as some say, but rather to the weakness of
the maternal heat. (For their nature seems to be incapable, and
unable to perfect or to put the last touches to the process of
generation. Hence it is that the mola remains in them till old age
or at any rate for a long time, for in its nature it is neither
perfect nor altogether a foreign body.) It is want of concoction that
is the reason of its hardness, as with half-cooked meat, for this
half-dressing of meat is also a sort of want of concoction.
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