Another natural cause of barrenness, is want of love between man and wife.  Love is that vivid principle that ought to inspire each organ in the act of generation, or else it will be spiritless and dull; for if their hearts be not united in love, how should their seed unite to cause Conception?  And this is sufficiently evinced, in that there never follows conception on a rape.  Therefore, if men and women design to have children, let them live so, that their hearts as well as their bodies may be united, or else they may miss their expectations.

A third cause of natural barrenness, is the letting virgins blood in the arm before their natural courses are come down, which is usually in the fourteenth and fifteenth year of their age; sometimes, perhaps before the thirteenth, but never before the twelfth.  And because usually, they are out of order, and indisposed before their purgations come down, their parents run to the doctor to know what is the matter; and he, if not skilled, will naturally prescribe opening a vein in the arm, thinking fullness of blood the cause; and thus she seems recovered for the present:  and when the young virgin happens to be in the same disorder, the mother applies again to the surgeon, who uses the same remedy; and by these means the blood is so diverted from its proper channel, that it comes not down the womb as usual, and so the womb dries up, and she is for ever barren.  To prevent this, let no virgin blood in the arm before her courses come down well; for that will bring the blood downwards, and by that means provoke the menstrua to come down.

Another cause of natural barrenness, is debility in copulation.  If persons perform not that act with all the bent and ardour that nature requires, they may as well let it alone; for frigidity and coldness never produces conception.  Of the cure of this we will speak by and by, after I have spoken of accidental barrenness, which is occasioned by some morbific matter or infirmity in the body, either of the man or of the woman, which being removed they become fruitful.  And since, as I have before noted, the first and great law of creation, was to increase and multiply, and barrenness is in direct opposition to that law, and frustrates the end of our creation, and often causes man and wife to have hard thoughts one of another, I shall here, for the satisfaction of well meaning people, set down the signs and causes of insufficiency both in men and women; premising first that when people have no children, they must not presently blame either party, for neither may be in fault.

SECT.  II.—­Signs and Causes of Insufficiency in Men.

One cause may be in some viciousness of the yard, as if the same be crooked, or any ligaments thereof distorted and broken, whereby the ways and passages, through which the seed should flow, come to be stopped or vitiated.

Another cause may be, too much weakness of the yard, and tenderness thereof, so that it is not strong enough erected to inject seed into the womb; for the strength and stiffness of the yard very much conduces to conception, by reason of the forcible injection of the seed.