a medicine.  As for instance, the procreative faculty lies in the testicles; therefore, cocks’ stones, lambs’ stones, etc., are proper to stir up venery.  I will also give you another general rule; all creatures that are fruitful being eaten, make them fruitful that eat them, as crabs, lobsters, prawns, pigeons, etc.  The stones of a fox, dried and beaten to a powder, and a drachm taken in the morning in sheep’s milk, and the stones of a boar taken in like manner, are very good.  The heart of a male quail carried about a man, and the heart of a female quail carried about a woman, causes natural love and fruitfulness.  Let them, also, that would increase their seed, eat and drink of the best, as much as they can; for sine Cerere el Libero, friget Venus, is an old proverb, which is, “without good meat and drink, Venus will be frozen to death.”

Pottages are good to increase the seed; such as are made of beans, peas, and lupins, mixed with sugar.  French beans, wheat sodden in broth, aniseed, also onions, stewed garlic, leeks, yellow rapes, fresh mugwort roots, eringo roots confected, ginger connected, etc.  Of fruits, hazel nuts, cyprus nuts, pistachio, almonds and marchpanes thereof.  Spices good to increase seed are cinnamon, galengal, long pepper, cloves, ginger, saffron and asafoetida, a drachm and a half taken in good wine, is very good for this purpose.

The weakness and debility of a man’s yard, being a great hindrance to procreation let him use the following ointment to strengthen it:  Take wax, oil of beaver-cod, marjoram, gentle and oil of costus, of each a like quantity, mix them into an ointment, and put it to a little musk, and with it anoint the yard, cods, etc.  Take of house emmets, three drachms, oil of white safannum, oil of lilies, of each an ounce; pound and bruise the ants, and put them to the oil and let them stand in the sun six days; then strain out the oil and add to it euphorbium one scruple, pepper and rue, of each one drachm, mustard seed half a drachm, set this altogether in the sun two or three days, then anoint the instrument of generation therewith.

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CHAPTER II

     The Diseases of the Womb.

I have already said, that the womb is the field of generation; and if this field be corrupted, it is vain to expect any fruit, although it be ever so well sown.  It is, therefore, not without reason that I intend in this chapter to set down the several distempers to which the womb is obnoxious, with proper and safe remedies against them.

SECTION I.—­Of the Hot Distemper of the Womb.