>
> Helkiah Crooke's Microcosmographia treats the nourishment of the fetus in
> the controversies regarding the fifth book, The Historie of the Infant,
> pp. 315-17. If Spenser knew anything about such, he had different
> possibilities for "commune food." If Spenser means that the two literally
> "sucked" the vital blood, he also touches on the controversies.
>
> In Question XXIII, "Whether the Infant draw his nourishment at the mouth,"
> Crooke refers to Alcmaeon, who thought the "infant drew his nourishment by
> his whole body, because it is rare and spongy. . . . " Crooke says
> Plutarch reports that Democritus and Epicurus thought that "the Infant in
> the wombe drew his nourishment at his mouth."
>
> Crooke says Hippocrates also in one place says the fetus takes nourishment
> in at the mouth, but Crooke doesn't believe the statement is authentic.
> Elsewhere, Crooke reports, Hippocrates says the infant draws both
> nourishment and air through the navel.
>
> In Question XXIIII, "Whether the Infant be nourished only by Blood, and
> whether he accomplish only Concoction," Crooke says Hippocrates thought
> the fetus was nourished "with the purest part of his mother's blood."
>
> Galen, on the other hand, thought that "in the first months the fetus drew
> in the purest of the Blood," but "when he is growne greater, he draweth
> the pure and impure together." (From what Crooke says on p. 859, I think
> "impure" blood here refers to blood from the veins.)
>
> And Crooke reports that Hippocrates also "acknowledgeth a double Aliment
> of the Infant." In the first months Hippocrates thinks the Infant is
> nourished with pure Blood: but "when he beginneth to move," then "a part
> of the Blood returneth to the Paps, and is there turned into Milke and
> from thence commeth again to the Wombe by the communion of the veins for
> the nourishment of the Infant." Crooke is skeptical about this
> possibility, but not about the authenticity of the statement.
>
> Jim Broaddus
>
A wonderful thread on a puzzling and fascinating passage. Rather than
throw yet another vegetable into this rich stew, I want to single out for
praise a few of your telling insights. Re: Harry's caveat about jumping
from one allegory into another, we certainly have to grant that at least
the physiological allegory is there, and build from that to the BVMary and
Christ, which may also be there, as Jim N points out, but only
adjectivally, perhaps in order to characterize Eliz. as like Christ, as I
argue in a forthcoming article. Jim B contributes that blood is involved
not only in the placenta in the womb but in milk production for children
already born. This means we don't have to decide whether this sucking is
prenatal or postnatal because it is both. This fits with the parallel
construction "not. . . nor." Margaret is right that the blood is not
common because virginal, and that would seem to be the main point since
the whole passage is introduced to explain why Belphoebe wants to remain a
virgin. Jim B or somebody would ideally have to find some factual
statement of this in the medical literature, but the poetic tradition can
be established: We have to infer that the blood of Amavia has been
polluted by her recent intercourse with Mortdant from the statement that
"the charme and venim which *they* drunk /*Their* blood with secret filth
infected hath (II.ii.4," (see my article on them in SEnc.); and Lucrece's
blood has been literally turned black by Tarquin's seed, according to
Shakespeare(Lucrece 1454).
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