Clinical Gynecology and Aristotle’s Biology:

The Composition of HA X *

LESLEY DEAN-JONES
Department of Classics
The University of Texas
Austin, TX 78712, USA
[email protected]

Although Aristotle was an avid researcher into the processes of sexual re-
production, many of his statements show that he had limited access to the
bodies of women. For example, he failed to note that in women, unlike
other female mammals, the urethra and vagina have separate orifices on
the exterior of the body,1 and he believed that menstrual bleeding was akin
to estrus and took place at the same time of the month in all women.2 It
might seem that Aristotle simply did not avail himself of the knowledge
available from physicians who attended women. However, the gathering of
endoxa (professional opinions and empirical observations) before proceed-
ing with his own theorizing on any subject was central to Aristotle’s meth-
odology and it would be inconceivable that he would have failed to do this
on the topic of women too. In the present paper, I wish to argue that the
Aristotelian corpus, as it has been transmitted to us, contains in the first
five chapters of Historia Animalium X (HA X) a treatise, On Failure to
Reproduce (OFR), authored by a doctor, whom I shall call Ps-Aristotle,
which formed part of Aristotle’s endoxa when developing his reproductive
theories. I will argue that the final two chapters have been added as com-
ments on OFR either by Aristotle himself or a later Peripatetic, and that
it is the presence of these two chapters that has led to the work being

* This article outlines my findings developed during the preparation of a translation

and commentary on HA X, which is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.
R. J. Hankinson was extremely supportive when I first approached him with my ideas
and collaborated in the initial translation of the treatise. I am very grateful for his
insights, suggestions, and support from the early stages of the project. The paper has
also benefited from the remarks of the anonymous referees for Apeiron and the Cam-
bridge University Press. Any shortcomings in the paper are entirely my own.
1
PA 689a6–9; see Dean-Jones 1994, 80–3.
2
GA 767a2–6; see Dean-Jones 1994, 97

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 181

included in the Aristotelian Corpus. Without these, nobody would have

taken OFR for an Aristotelian composition.
Among the works in the Aristotelian corpus are 10 books known col-
lectively as HA or Researches into Animals. These record Aristotle’s obser-
vations of various types of animals, organized by body system. That is to
say, he describes the different types of, e.g., dentition, lungs, legs, and eye-
brows in the zoological realm rather than treating each group or species of
animal as a whole. Book X, however, stands apart from the rest of the
work and deals exclusively with sterility in humans – almost exclusively
women. Of the earliest catalogues of Aristotle’s works, those of Diogenes
Laertius and the Vita Menagiana (which probably derive from a list made
by Ariston of Ceos c. 200 BC) list HA as comprising only 9 books and
also list a treatise entitled On Failure to Reproduce (peri tou mê gennân). A
later catalogue deriving from the 1st c. BC recension of Andronicus, that
of Ptolemy, makes no reference to OFR but does cite HA as containing
10 books. It is generally agreed that the OFR of the Ariston list and the
HA X of the Andronican recension are one and the same treatise, but it is
disputed as to whether Aristotle authored these. Doubts about the authen-
ticity of the work seem to have arisen early. Ten of the nineteen manu-
scripts of HA contain only Books I–IX and in those that do contain X, it
has often been added by a later hand. All manuscripts of HA X ultimately
derive from one 14th c. manuscript, Vaticanus 262.3
Until recently, it has been widely accepted by modern scholars that
HA X is not part of HA and Aristotle is not the author of this work.4
The main argument against Aristotelian authorship is that the author de-
scribes a woman as contributing seed to conception in the same way a
man does, while Aristotle argues vigorously in Generation of Animals (GA)
and elsewhere that among animals that reproduce sexually, the roles of the
mother and father are not parallel, and in particular that the female con-
tribution to conception cannot involve the equivalent of the male seed.
The non-Aristotelian status of the work was challenged in an article by
David Balme, the major initiator of the revival of the study of Aristotle’s
biology in the latter part of the 20th century.5 He argued that HA X had
been correctly identified in the list of Ariston, and reflected in the catalo-

3
Balme 1991, 37–41
4
Tricot 1957 argued for Aristotelian authorship, but agreed that he abandoned the
views expressed in the treatise in his later works.
5
Upon his death in 1989, Balme left unfinished a new edition of the text of all of the
HA, a translation of Books VII–X, a commentary on the first seven books and divers
notes on the last three. The text, translation and a few notes on Books VII–X ap-
peared in 1991 in the Loeb series, and the Balme/Gotthelf edition of the text of
Books I–X was published by the Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries series
in 2002. A second volume of commentary and notes is forthcoming and may contain

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182 Lesley Dean-Jones

gues of Diogenes Laertius and the Vita Menagiana, as an independent

treatise on the causes of human sterility written by Aristotle. Allan Got-
thelf who prepared Balme’s edition of HA for posthumous publication,
tends to share Balme’s views on the authenticity of HA X.6 Sabine Föllin-
ger rehearses the arguments for and against the Aristotelian authorship of
HA X and draws attention to some of the weaknesses in Balme’s position;
ultimately, however, she is unable to declare for or against Aristotelian
authenticity and hence makes relatively little use of the treatise in her
book, in which she compares the various theories of gender relationship in
the classical period and demonstrates the sophistication of Aristotle’s argu-
ments compared with earlier theorists.7 In response to Föllinger’s work,
Philip van der Eijk defended the authenticity of HA X, arguing that it
could originally have been a medical work by Aristotle.8
Before these publications appeared, I had argued briefly against
Balme’s views and for the position that HA X is a work written by an
anonymous Greek doctor influenced by Aristotle.9 In light of the recent
claims for Aristotelian authenticity, at a time when the study of the biolo-
gical works is occupying an increasingly central position in the study of
Aristotelian philosophy, this position needs to be argued for in more de-
tail. As stated above, I have also come to see HA X as the result of a
different interaction between Aristotle and the author than I did initially.
I shall, therefore, refer to the first five chapters of HA X throughout this
paper as OFR and its author as Ps-Aristotle to emphasize that not only is
Book X not part of HA nor written by Aristotle, but that it is not, and
was never intended to be viewed as a unified work.
In this paper, I will not enter into any stylistic issues, and I do not
regard them as pivotal to my argument. There are, to be sure, grammatical
features that immediately strike a reader as un-Aristotelian, such as the
comparatively frequent use of neuter plural verbs with neuter plural sub-
jects.10 Like most classical authors, Aristotle almost always uses a singular
verb with neuter plurals. There is also a general grammatical carelessness

notes on Book X additional to those in the 1985 article and the Loeb that would
clarify Balme’s position on some of the issues I deal with.
6
Gotthelf is not adamant about this (personal communication) period. He may or
may not agree with any point Balme makes in the editions he prepared for publica-
tion after Balme’s death. The only comments he added in his own right appear in
square brackets in the Introductions.
7
Föllinger 1996, 143–56.
8
Van der Eijk 1999.
9
Dean-Jones 1992, 73–74 and 1994, 14–15.
10
Examples include 634b1, 634b19, 634b20, and 634b25. I will deal more fully with
stylistic issues in my CUP commentary.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 183

of sequence that is uncharacteristic even of Aristotle’s admittedly crabbed

and terse style. However, there are also some similarities to Aristotelian
vocabulary and phrasing, especially in the last two chapters, and van der
Eijk argues that the apparent differences of style and vocabulary between
OFR and other Aristotelian biological works can be explained by the fact
that, as a medical work, it is of a different genre from the rest of the
Aristotelian corpus, and hence, such divergences do not provide conclusive
evidence for a non-Aristotelian provenance of the text. However, this ar-
gument acknowledges that the stylistics of the work do not provide com-
pelling grounds for Aristotelian authorship either.
Arguments for and against authenticity center on the content of OFR,
primarily on the claim therein that a woman contributes seed (gonê or
sperma11) to conception in the same way a man does. In all his other
discussions on the topic, Aristotle argues that the only fluid women con-
tribute to conception is menses (katamênia), and though he sometimes
refers to menses with the terms he uses for male semen (gonê and sperma),
he is insistent that unlike male semen, menses cannot carry ‘form’ or ei-
dos.12 Balme and van der Eijk believe that in OFR too the terms gonê and
sperma, as well as katamênia, refer to the menses and that with some re-
finement the account of conception in OFR can be reconciled with the
theory of conception put forward in Aristotle’s other biological works.
However, I argue that in OFR, Ps-Aristotle clearly differentiates female
seed from menses as well as from a third sexual fluid, the vaginal lubricant.
I shall begin with an overview of Aristotle’s theory of sexual reproduction
to which the theory of OFR may be compared.
In Aristotle’s philosophy, generally a new entity comes into being
whenever form, eidos, is put into matter that previously took a less orga-
nized form. Thus, clay (here viewed as matter though it is known through
its form ‘clay’) can be formed into bricks. These bricks, in turn, can be
seen as matter that can be formed into a house. Houses could perhaps
even be viewed as matter for a village. Eidos itself is completely immaterial;
it is a principle of organization introduced into matter by an ‘efficient
cause’ (in the case of a house, this would be the builder).
In a human, the eidos is implanted at conception in the menses as the
body’s principle or archê, and from within directs the elaboration of the
individual to maturity, beginning with the production of a rudimentary
heart.13 When we ingest food, the heat in our archê cooks or ‘concocts’

11
There is no consistent differentiation between these terms. For evidence of their in-
terchangeability, cf. HA 523a13–27, GA 727a26–30, and 739b9–10.
12
This term will be explained in the following paragraph.
13
See GA 15–26.

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184 Lesley Dean-Jones

the nourishment into blood.14 This is then organized into human organs
and tissues specific to the sex of the individual by the eidos in the archê
while simultaneously reproducing the traits that make the individual dif-
ferent from all other humans of the same sex. Aristotle describes these
levels of organization as human/sexual and individual ‘movements’.15
After the slowing down and cessation of growth at puberty, any left-
over nourishment which is not needed to maintain the individual’s own
body – but is the sort of material which could have been used in any part
of it – is further concocted by the archê from blood into the generative
fluids of semen and menses. This further concoction is necessary in order
to prepare the material to take on a new independent archê, rather than
simply be deployed in one part of an already instantiated eidos. A woman
lacks sufficient heat in her archê to concoct her menses to the point of
being able to infuse them with an entire new and separate eidos. Beyond
maintaining her own eidos, she can concoct her blood only to the penulti-
mate point of being ready to receive an entirely independent form: men-
strual blood is to ordinary blood as bricks are to clay, but the mother’s
archê does not possess the heat needed to organize them into an individual
separate from herself.16 The menses are stored in her uterus to await the
infusion of heat that can establish this independent organizational princi-
ple. This is provided by the man who concocts his seminal residue to the
penultimate point then stores it in blood-like form in the tubes around
his testicles. The heat caused by the rush of pneuma (extremely hot air17)
from the heart to the testicles during intercourse performs the ultimate
concoction of the semen; at this point, it becomes white hot and can take
on the father’s human, male and individual ‘movements’ in their entirety.
Once brought into contact with the menses, semen acts as a tool by which
to transfer the father’s heat and eidos and establish an independent archê
in the menses that directs the development of a new individual. Having
performed its function of transferring the father’s heat and eidos, the se-
men itself evaporates. Its matter does not blend with the menses. If all
goes well, according to Aristotle, a new male individual in the image of
the father is formed. If the male’s semen lacks heat vis-à-vis the amount of
menses to be informed, for instance if his penis is too long or the female
menses are particularly abundant, the archê that is established will itself
lack the heat to concoct semen when the time comes (after puberty) and
the new individual will ‘relapse’ from the male sex to the female. Aristotle

14
The term translated as ‘concoction’ is pepsis, which signifies the modification of mat-
ter by heat, from ripening and cooking to the processes of digestion within the body.
15
GA 767a36–8a22.
16
GA 728a17–22.
17
GA 736a2.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 185

justifies this by saying that it is natural for a thing to lapse into its oppo-
site. To this extent, a woman is a teras (monster or deformity), because it
is the male form which is the proper instantiation of the species, but she
is a necessary monster because without her any reproduction of the species
would be impossible.18
In terms of formal and material causation, this theory of sexual repro-
duction fits with the rest of Aristotle’s philosophy. However, in limiting
the mother’s contribution to providing matter, the theory appears to entail
that all children – both sons and daughters – would resemble their fathers.
Aristotle addresses this by saying simply that should the father’s individual
movements fail to gain the mastery required, they will lapse into the
mother’s because the individual mother is opposite to the individual father
just as a female is opposite to a male.19 This has led at least one scholar to
claim that, somehow, the male semen carried every possible mother’s indi-
vidual traits,20 but this position is difficult to maintain. Some critics claim
that no meaning can be given to Aristotle’s statement on relapse, because
it is simply a stop-gap argument he uses to acknowledge the possibility of
maternal resemblance without giving up his claim that there is no form in
the menses.21 Most scholars on Aristotle’s reproductive theories try to ex-
plain how the mother’s individual movements can be present in the
menses when the human/sexual movements are not.22 OFR could supply
support for this view if it reflects an earlier stage in Aristotle’s thinking, in
which menses are analogous in every way to the male seed, thereby fully
qualifying as gonê/sperma. His later claim that the menses do not contain
eidos can then be taken merely as a refinement of this position, i.e., that
they do not carry the human eidos. This theory argues that he continues
to use the terms gonê and sperma to refer to the menses, because they carry
the mother’s individual movements even though they are not fully ‘seed’
in the sense of male semen.
However, this position is untenable. For instance, the mother’s chin
could be prominent, receding, pointed or cleft, but it could not be any of
these if it were not first a human chin, and if it is to be her individual
chin it will also have to be a female chin because, unless she is extremely
unfortunate, the mother is beardless. Allowing all these movements to be
in the menses would be akin to granting the mother the ability to carry
the full human eidos in her menses, which Aristotle expressly denies. I shall

18
See GA 767a36–8b37. For a fuller account and further references to the relevant
Aristotelian passages. see Dean-Jones 1994, 184–93.
19
GA 768a7–9.
20
Cooper 1988.
21
For example, Keuls 1985, 146.
22
For example, Mayhew 2004, 28–53.

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186 Lesley Dean-Jones

argue at another time that it is not, in fact, difficult to account for resem-
blance to the mother on Aristotle’s theory. However, I want to consider
first why Aristotle, in contrast to almost every other reproductive theorist
in ancient Greece, should be so wedded to the belief that women do not
contribute seed as a father does to the conception of a child.23
From the purely empirical point of view, Aristotle is correct in asserting
that women do not have to reach orgasm and ejaculate to conceive a child.
Those who believe male and female contributions to conception are parallel
could be led to the assertion that if a woman conceives as the result of a
rape, she must have had an appetite for sex, even if, as Soranus puts it, she
repressed the knowledge from herself.24 The author of the Hippocratic trea-
tise On Generation explains that because a woman emits her seed directly
into her womb, there will not always be any external sign that a woman has
ejaculated, although, if the womb is more widely open than usual, the fe-
male seed can fall out of the cervix and appear in the vagina.25 What shows
a woman must have ejaculated even in the absence of perceivable seed or
any other sign of enjoyment is that she conceives. In contrast, Aristotle sta-
ted explicitly that one reason to deny that women produce seed is that they
assert that whether or not they enjoy intercourse has no bearing on whether
or not they conceive.26 He acknowledges that a fluid usually appears in a
woman’s vagina when she reaches orgasm, and he believes this facilitates
conception by affording ‘a better passage for the semen’, but the presence of
this lubricant is not necessary for conception because it is not semen.27
There is a further objection that Aristotle could level against propo-
nents of female ‘seed’ of whatever form: the scarcity of human hermaph-
rodites. Proponents of female seed argue that resemblance to parents is
due to the child receiving material from the bodies of both its mother and
father. This could either be drawn from all the different body parts at the
time of orgasm, or it could be accumulated from all over the body and
stored in the brain to be drawn down the body during intercourse.
Although children would receive seed from the noses of both parents, they
would be born with their father’s nose if his nose seed was stronger or in
greater abundance than that of the mother. However, in the same concep-
tion, the mother’s eye seed could be stronger than the father’s, so a child
could be born with his mother’s brown eyes and his father’s snub nose. By
the same token, if the transference of material accounts for resemblance,

23
An earlier version of my ideas can be read in Dean-Jones 2000.
24
Gynecology I 37.
25
De Semine 4.
26
GA 727b7–11 .
27
GA 739a29–36.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 187

children should be appearing regularly with their father’s penis and their
mother’s breasts, or their mother’s vagina and their father’s hairiness–but
this hardly ever happens. Simple contiguity of the reproductive system can-
not be used as an explanation for why it almost invariably goes together as
a whole because it is less contiguous than the face. Aristotle’s theory, on
the other hand, explains sex as a systemic modification of the species form.
To be human is to be either male or female, and in Aristotle’s theory this
can be traced to a single cause: heat. The mother affects this only so far as
the amount of her menses stands in proportion to the heat of the man’s
semen. Those who argue that resemblance to the mother derives from her
material contribution have to explain what material part of the body fe-
maleness derives from when, for instance, a daughter could have her
father’s chin but remain beardless. In Aristotle’s theory, this is explained
by the daughter having an archê, which lacks the heat of the male sex but
retains her father’s individual movements in respect of the chin.
In insisting on a lack of parallelism between the contributions of the
mother and father to conception, Aristotle’s theory also provides an expli-
cation as to why sexual reproduction requires two parents. If a woman
supplies seed, a place for the fetus to develop and material for its nourish-
ment, there would seem to be no need of a father. Proponents of female
seed, such as Empedocles and the Hippocratic author of On Generation,
address the problem by stating that each sex has only half the material
needed to make a new individual, which must then be complemented by
the contribution of the opposite sex before conception could take place.
This might seem to be prescient of what we now know about chromo-
somes, but it really is nothing more than an acknowledgement that two
opposite sexes are necessary for most animal reproduction. It is difficult
for those who champion female seed to explain why a father has to con-
tribute anything to the production of a daughter who appears to resemble
her mother in all particularities, though they would have to admit that he
plays a necessary role.
So then, with the apparent exception of explaining how a child could
look like his mother, Aristotle’s claim that conception is caused by the
transfer of information carried in the male’s seminal fluid into the materi-
al of the female’s menses is an advancement on all earlier theories that
conceive of parallel male and female roles in conception. Balme and others
want to argue that Aristotle did explain a child’s resemblance to its
mother by assuming that the menses contained the mother’s form – albeit
in some adumbrated way – and that his later loose characterization of
menses as gonê or sperma was a holdover from an earlier stage of his theo-
ry, in which he held that menses were a closer parallel to male semen than
he later believed. They cite OFR as evidence of this earlier stage. I argue
that in OFR, menses and female semen two distinct fluids, which Aristotle
flatty states is impossible at GA 727a26–30.

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188 Lesley Dean-Jones

The opening words of OFR show that it has been written from a
practical point of view unlike every Aristotelian biological treatise. When
the author says, ‘So then, first in the case of the female it is necessary to
examine how things stand concerning the womb, so that if the cause ‹of
sterility› lies there it can be treated …’28 he is imagining a physical exam-
ination of a female patient, not a theoretical investigation into the nature
of the womb.29 Balme tries to downplay the therapeutic nature of the text,
an attempt which van der Eijk rightly says is doomed to failure.30 Van der
Eijk himself acknowledges the clinical nature of the text and argues that
Aristotle would have been more practical and less theoretical in a medical
work than in his general philosophical works. It is difficult to test this
assumption because we have no example of Aristotle writing for a specia-
lized professional audience. In his extant works, Aristotle views doctors
and other professionals as specialists who can provide him with endoxa in
the elaboration of his general philosophical theories, not as groups whom
he can enlighten in their field of expertise.
Meanwhile, the author of OFR does speak as a professional giving
advice to less experienced practitioners. For example, the first thing he
directs a doctor to look for when considering a woman’s uterus is its mo-
bility; if it is in good condition, he says, it should remain in one position
and not be first in one place then in another (634a1–2). Aristotle insisted
that the womb is fixed in place and could not ‘wander’ as it is said to do
in the Hippocratic works (GA 720a12); however, he did allow that the
womb ‘descended’ during menstruation and conception and Balme claims
that it is to these movements that OFR is referring here and uses the
passage as evidence for Aristotle’s authorship.31 However, the passage
seems to be arguing that being first in one place and then in another is a
pathological sign and not the normative physiological movement involved
in menstruation and conception that both Aristotle and the author of
OFR claim are characteristic of a healthy womb. The implication is that
Ps-Aristotle believes that wombs in bad condition could ‘wander’ in some
fashion. Of course, Aristotle may have held this belief at an earlier stage of
his theory, but the passage cannot be used as evidence of Aristotelian
authorship.
After considering the position of the uterus, the author directs a doc-
tor to proceed to consider the state of the menses in a woman who is
having difficulty in becoming pregnant. Throughout this section, the

28
All translations are my one.
29
That the text itself does not describe any particular treatment is typical of Hippo-
cratic treatises.
30
Van der Eijk 1999, 497.
31
Balme 1985, 198 and 1991, note ad loc.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 189

author refers to menses as the ‘fluid’ (hygrotes or hygron), never as gonê or

sperma. Moreover, in discussing the menses per se, he gives no indication
that they are necessary for conception. Menstruation is important because
regular evacuation of fluid, which is not too scanty, excessive nor ‘putre-
fied’ (sesêmmena mallon), shows that the womb and the body are func-
tioning correctly.
Another sign that things are as they should be is the appropriate eva-
cuation of ‘whites’. Ps-Aristotle says all women discharge slightly putrefied
‘whites’ at the beginning and end of menstruation, but as long as they do
not have an odor of pus they are a sign that there is heating (thermasia)
present and ‘matters concerning the uterus are as they should be for child-
bearing’ (634b24–25). Balme has no note on this passage, but I suspect in
the reference to heating he would find a suggestion that at an early stage
in his writings Aristotle believed the menses could be concocted into a
whiter seminal material akin to male semen by the heat of the womb
before it is swamped by a greater of menstrual fluid.32 In the GA Aris-
totle does discuss physiological leucorrhea and pathological leucorrhagia
(738a23–34), but there he explains them as quantity residues. If OFR
represented an earlier stage in his career when he had thought of them as
more highly concocted residues, it is highly unlikely he would have re-
ferred to them as ‘putrefied’. Elsewhere, Aristotle seems to confuse the
‘whites’ with the vaginal lubricant.33 Neither discharge has a specific func-
tion in his reproductive theory so he has no real interest in them. For a
Hippocratic doctor, however, every bodily evacuation has diagnostic value;
thus, the normal appearance, smell, quantity, occasion and source of every
discharge must be identified. Note also that Ps-Aristotle believes that the
best time for conception is when the womb is empty (635a23–8) in con-
trast to Aristotle’s theory, in which there has to be a certain amount of
menses in the womb for conception to take place (GA 727b10–34),
though it is true that they both believe that the most favorable time for
conception is just after menstruation has finished.
But perhaps Balme would argue that OFR’s statement, that the womb
is most likely to conceive when it ‘has no residues around the passageway’,
reflects Aristotle’s belief that only a very small amount of menses is needed
for conception, the amount that begins to gather further back in the
womb just after menstruation has finished. Even so, there is still a further
discrepancy between Aristotle’s claims about menses and Ps-Aristotle’s on

32
In the interest of stating an argument, I am trying to anticipate how a supporter of
Balme’s theory would explain how the seed of OFR could be identified with menses
when the author asserts it has to be ejaculated during intercourse and the womb has
to be empty for conception to occur.
33
GA 728a1–10.

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190 Lesley Dean-Jones

female seed. Aristotle asserts that menstrual fluid flows naturally into the
womb over the course of the month;34 OFR claims that female seed is
ejaculated in a similar way to that of the male’s upon orgasm.35 If, as
Balme argues, the female gonê/sperma of OFR is menses, the author must
imagine it as initially being stored in the passages around the womb, just
as blood-like semen is stored in passages around the testes in the male
according to Aristotle’s reproductive theory. The concoction to gonê
would be fully achieved only at orgasm, when the female would ejaculate
the fully concocted seed into the womb. Presumably, if the woman does
not reach orgasm, the menses would flow into the uterus and be evacuated
in their bloody state during menstruation. The extra heat in the empty
womb at the beginning and end of menstruation would, Balme might
argue, begin the transformation of the menses to seed, producing the
‘whites’, but would not be sufficient to produce true gonê.36 Aristotle may,
at some point, have held such a theory, but it is increasingly at odds with
what he says about conception in the rest of his biology, and there is no
objective evidence of any connection between menses and gonê in OFR.
All the evidence points to Ps-Aristotle believing that menses and gonê
are completely independent fluids. OFR says that after a dream in which
she appeared to have intercourse with her husband, a woman should gen-
erally awake weaker, but not ill, though occasionally she may even gain in
vigour from the experience. This is said to be evidence that in ejaculation,
the whole body is gathering and disposing of something, not just the
uterus (636a3–4). Women are stronger after orgasm ‘when the gonê has
accumulated in large quantities at the place from which they emit it,’
(636b26–36), i.e., when there has been enough time since the last ejacula-
tion for the gonê to have built up to the point where it could distress the
woman. It is the fact that she is relieved of this stored seed that makes a
woman more vigorous. A woman is weakened when the seed ‘comes out
of the amount that the body needs’, but the weakness does not last be-
cause the body easily replenishes the seed. If the seed is derived from the
fabric of the body, as in pangenetic theories, this weakness makes sense,
but if the gonê is menses in some form it is difficult to see how the loss of
it could weaken a woman. OFR does not explain the origin of menstrual
fluid,37 but in every ancient Greek theory on normal menstruation, the
woman’s own body has no need of menstrual fluid. She produces it pre-

34
GA 737b28.
35
634b37 et passim.
36
Again, I am trying to construct as strong an argument as possible here to explain how
the seed of OFR could be identified with menses when the author asserts it has to be
ejaculated during intercourse and the womb has to be empty for conception to occur.
37
This is true at least in the five extant chapters; arguments that we have only a section
of the treatise will be given in my CUP commentary.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 191

cisely because when she is not pregnant, the nourishment she takes in is in
excess of her body’s requirements. This is true just as much in Aristotle’s
theory as anybody else’s. At GA 725b7–9, however, Aristotle does attri-
bute a man’s weakness after ejaculation to the body’s ‘being deprived of
the final product formed out of the nourishment’. This does not quite jibe
with Aristotle’s theory because, according to GA, the seminal residue is
available to be emitted precisely because the man’s body does not need it.
Aristotle would have kept more in line with his own theories if to explain
the lassitude following ejaculation he elaborated on the effects of concoc-
tion and violent stimulation, to which he alludes briefly at GA 723b35.
The language of the body’s deprivation of nourishment by ejaculation
seems to have been misappropriated from pangenetic theories, such as that
of OFR.
Nevertheless, let us grant to Balme that the author of OFR believes
without stating it explicitly that, while the female ‘seed’ is usually drawn
from the accumulation of menstrual fluid around the womb, it would be
drawn directly from the fabric of the body if there are no accumulated
menses (though presumably it would pass through a stage of being men-
strual in nature). Still, there is another discrepancy that Balme would have
to account for, which argues against the identification of gonê with con-
cocted menses: in OFR menses and gonê have different points of discharge;
gonê is not ejaculated into or out of the womb.
This is implied when, in discussing the accumulation of gonê, Ps-Aris-
totle refers to the site of the accumulation as ‘the place from which they
‹women› emit it’ (636b26–36); he does not identify it as the womb,
though this would have been easier than the circumlocution. The fact that
gonê is emitted outside of the womb but not by the womb becomes even
clearer in Ps-Aristotle’s remarks on the cervix. If the position of the uterus
or the nature of the menses do not account for a woman’s sterility, OFR
says that a doctor should next consider the cervix, and check whether or
not it is in a straight line. If it is not, ‘the uterus will not draw the seed
into itself. For the woman’s emission too is into the region in front of the
uterus’ (634b28–30). Ps-Aristotle explains that the woman has to emit, as
the man does, in front of the uterus in order for the seeds to mingle. Preg-
nancy can then occur no matter what the position of coition. If women
emitted directly into the womb they would never conceive no matter what
position they assumed, because their seed would fail to mix with the man’s.
At first it may appear as if Ps-Aristotle, like the Hippocratic author of
On Generation, is here mistaking the lubricant, which is frequently exuded
in the vagina during intercourse, for female seed, and that Ps-Aristotle
likewise conceived of this fluid as emanating from the uterus. However, at
635b18–25 he describes a fluid produced by the uterus through the exer-
tion of intercourse as ‘a local secretion, just as in the mouth there is often
a local secretion of saliva both at the expectation of food, and whenever

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192 Lesley Dean-Jones

we are chattering and working hard ourselves … Even uteri that are in
particularly good condition suffer this affection’. Too much of this fluid
can be a hindrance to conception; and although it is connected with sex-
ual activity, it is not connected with orgasm per se, whereas the author
states that the emission of seed is produced ‘when they ‹women› have
erotic dreams which reach completion’ (634b30). Thus, Ps-Aristotle clearly
distinguishes the vaginal lubricant from female gonê in terms of function
and time of emission.
In a long note in the Loeb, Balme claims that beyond being differen-
tiated from the vaginal lubricant, the nature of ‘seed’ is never further deli-
neated in the text. Further, he draws attention to the fact that in the GA,
Aristotle also ‘says generally that the moisture secreted in coition is local
only and is not seed’.38 He seems to be arguing that eliminating the vagi-
nal lubricant leaves menses as the only candidate for seed. He likewise
acknowledges that in OFR, the woman is said to emit her seed ‘into the
region in front of the uterus’. However, since he takes the seed to be
menses, he constantly refers to the woman’s seed as being emitted by the
uterus. This is not only an unsupported assumption, it is also contradicted
by the text. The statement at 634b28–30 implies that the woman emits
her seed into the same place as the man, even when the cervix is turned
away from that place; this could be construed as evidence that the emis-
sion is not issuing from the womb.
More significantly, a passage at 637a22–35 describes an arrangement
of a tube (kaulos) outside of the womb through which a discharge (ekpto-
sis) is deposited in front of the womb. The kaulos is described as being
analogous to a penis. A passage (poros) leads from the kaulos to the outside
air near the opening of the urethra and allows air out during copulation.
When women are sexually excited, this area ‘is not in the same state as
before the excitement. Now it is from this kaulos that the ekptosis takes
place’. The natural assumption is that this ekptosis is analogous to the dis-
charge from the penis in a state of sexual excitement and is, therefore, to
be identified with female seed. Since he wants to identify the female seed
with the menses and have it emanate from inside the womb, Balme has to
explain this ekptosis, which undeniably comes from outside the womb, as a
wind drawn in from outside the body to aid in the attraction of the seed
into the womb; he then translates the term ekptosis as ‘outflow’. However,
the root pto- involves inescapable overtones of falling that seem inap-
propriate to the behavior of air. It is true that at 637b32 the text, as
printed in the Loeb and Cambridge editions, reads ‘The uterus does not
emit into itself but outside, where the man too emits’. However, it is a
relatively minor emendation, and more in keeping with normal Greek

38
Balme 1991, 489.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 193

word order, to read the nominative hai husterai as an object accusative in

agreement with the intensifier autas, which is the reading of the manu-
scripts rather than the reflexive hautas, and take women to be the subject
of the sentence. This would result in the translation, ‘Women do not emit
into the uterus itself, but outside’, which would keep the passage in con-
formity with the description of the emission of seed stated in 637a22–35.
Moreover, if the seminal emission were some form of concocted menses
released by the uterus, the phrasing ‘The uterus does not emit into itself’,
would be somewhat strange. We would rather expect phrasing, such as
‘The seed does not remain inside the womb’. We should also expect the
author to describe the gonê, which a woman emits in erotic dreams, as
being drawn back into the womb rather than, as is the case, simply being
drawn into. It seems clear that the female seed of OFR is a discharge that
is to be differentiated from menses, ‘the whites’ and vaginal lubricant, and
is deposited in front of the womb by the woman’s equivalent of a penis.
It is possible that Aristotle himself mistakes the author’s meaning if
his remarks at GA 739b14–20 are directed at this passage. These remarks
follow a discussion on how the male semen enters the womb. Aristotle
argues against the belief that the male semen is deposited directly into the
womb; rather, he says that it is drawn into the womb by the heat present
within it, in the same way warmed conical vessels draw material up into
themselves when turned upside down. He continues:
‘And in this way the suction takes place, and it does not occur in any way, as some
claim, through the parts instrumental in copulation. And it happens in reverse
(anapalin) for those who also claim that the woman too emits semen. For if the
uterus emits semen outside ‹itself›, it will have to draw it back inside again if it is
to be mixed with the seed of the male. To behave thus is superfluous, and Nature
does nothing superfluous’.
From the cross reference that Peck gives to GA 728a31 ff., it is clear that
he takes ‘the parts instrumental in copulation’ to refer to the place in
which Aristotle says the woman feels pleasure, during intercourse, which is
‘the same place as the male by contact’. I have argued elsewhere that this
is to be identified with the clitoris and that it is also the clitoris that is
referred to by the term poros in OFR.39 There is no other author that I
know of, medical or philosophical, who makes any reference to the role of
the clitoris in stimulating a woman’s pleasure in intercourse, so if Aris-
totle’s reference to a theory which argues that semen is drawn into the
womb ‘by the parts instrumental in copulation’ is to be identified with
any extant passage, then it would have to be OFR 637a22–35. The possi-
bility of the identification is strengthened by the fact that Aristotle says
that at least some of those who claim the parts instrumental in copulation

39
Dean-Jones 1992.

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194 Lesley Dean-Jones

have something to do with the taking up of semen by the womb also

claim that the woman emits semen as well as the man, i.e., the position of
OFR. Aristotle assumes that in this theory semen is first emitted by the
womb and then drawn back in again; hence, before it draws in it has to
act in reverse (anapalin) and push out, which is a superfluous action in
Aristotle’s estimation. As I have argued, this is not the argument in OFR,
but neither is it the argument in any other medical or philosophical theory
of reproduction. The Hippocratic treatise On Generation believes that a
woman’s semen can leak into her vagina if her cervix is open wider than
usual; however, like other Hippocratics, the author believes a woman’s seed
is emitted into her womb and mingles with the male semen there.40 To
reiterate, OFR is the only extant treatise that repeatedly states that a wo-
man’s seed is deposited in front of the womb. The position that Aristotle
is attacking here is consistent with the same misunderstanding of OFR as
that of Balme.
On the theory of multiple births, Aristotle likewise takes a position op-
posed to that of OFR.41 At 637a5–10, Ps-Aristotle uses the fact that twins
can occur in humans to show that a conception does not have to use up all
the material that the man and woman emit. If there is not enough for a
second fetus (as there usually is not), the excess seed will be left over in the
womb, or sometimes outside the womb, which can lead women into failing
to recognize they have become pregnant. If there is enough seed for two
fetuses, the material is divided up by being seized by different parts of the
womb. At GA 771b 27–30 Aristotle states categorically that multiple births
are not caused by semen being divided up into different parts of the womb;
he then points to evidence from animal dissections to support this. Regard-
ing this issue van der Eijk says that it is ‘The only problem concerning a
divergence of doctrine for which I fail to see an immediate solution’.42
However, Aristotle’s opposition to OFR is even more specific than van der
Eijk notes. At 637a10–15 Ps-Aristotle goes on to say:
‘Moreover, if many young come to be from one coupling, which is clear in the case
of pigs and sometimes in the case of twins in humans, it is clear that the semen
comes43 from the whole body but is parceled out in respect of each form.44 For it

40
De Semine 4.
41
636b40–637a15.
42
Van der Eijk 1999, 501.
43
We must seclude the negative ouk in l.12 for a balanced argument. It was surely
added by a copyist who realized that the affirmative sentence was roundly rejected in
Aristotle’s genuine biological works. This solution obviates the need for the long note
ad loc. in Balme’s Loeb edition and his puzzlement over how the last sentence is
supposed to follow logically from the one preceding it.
44
It should be noted that Ps.-Aristotle’s use of the term eidos is not the Aristotelian tech-
nical use of ‘information’, but the common Greek usage meaning ‘shape’ or ‘form’.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 195

is possible to separate off an individual from all the semen and for all the semen to
separate into many individuals. So that it is impossible at the same time for semen
to be separated off from the body part by part’.
In this passage, the author is arguing against the view that discrete parts of
the seed come from different parts of the body as stated, for example, in
the Hippocratic treatise Diseases IV 1. Ps-Aristotle is making a distinction
between the semen being separated off ‘from all the body’ (apo pantos –
which he believes is the case) and being separated off ‘part by part’ (kata
meros). He is arguing that since it is not necessary for all the semen to be
used to form a fetus, any correctly sized portion of the semen must be
capable of engendering an entire body. If there is a multiple conception,
the total semen must have contained a multiple of the correct portion size
to engender a whole fetus; we do not get half fetuses if the leftover is less
than the correct portion for a complete fetus. Therefore, seed must be
separated from the body as a unity not part by part. At GA 729a8–9,
Aristotle agrees with Ps-Aristotle that the seed cannot be separated off
from the body’s parts because, he argues, if this is the case then there
could be no mechanism to portion out the correct amount of each type of
seed to the different fetations. This is a somewhat different objection from
that of OFR. At GA 771b33–772a12 Aristotle also agrees with OFR that
the entirety of the seminal emissions is not necessarily used up in forming
a new individual. However, he attacks the theory of OFR in his first refer-
ence to multiple births at GA 723b9–15. This passage occurs toward the
end of a lengthy argument against pangenesis, most of which has been
directed against theories that posit the secretion of semen from the body
kata meros. Here he addresses the possibility that the semen somehow
comes away from the body as a unity:
‘And yet, how is this possible if the semen is secreted from the whole body (apo
pantos)? For it is necessary that one secretion arise from one act of copulation and
one separating off. And it is impossible for it to be divided in the uterus, for by
then it would already be the division as it were from a new plant or animal, not of
semen’.
At this point, Aristotle’s objection is not that the semen cannot be sepa-
rated off from discrete body parts, nor that the womb cannot divide the
semen correctly, but that if the separation of the semen from the body is a
unity, it can itself constitute a new individual, not simply a mass of semen.
This objection is more apt when directed against OFR than against any
other medical work of which I am aware.
The dissonance of OFR with Aristotle’s reproductive theory does not
preclude its being part of Aristotle’s juvenalia which, for some reason, has
been incorporated into the corpus completely unrevised; however, it seems
far more likely that the author is someone other than Aristotle. Its inclu-
sion in the Aristotelian corpus is, I think, explained by the final two chap-
ters of HA X.

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196 Lesley Dean-Jones

In OFR, Ps-Aristotle utilizes examples from animals in only a single

passage, namely, the one which uses multiple births to illustrate the fact
that the conception of a child does not necessarily utilize all the semen
produced from a man and a woman. Recourse to the example is forced
upon him because multiple births are not frequent in humans, probably
even less so in antiquity than today. Moreover, in antiquity, superfetation
– the conception of a second child after the woman is already pregnant
from a previous act of intercourse – was considered to be a viable cause of
twinning, the most common form of human multiple birth. Litter-bearing
animals were the simplest way to illustrate his point.
Chapter five of OFR deals with these kinds of issues because by this
point in the treatise, the author has dealt with all the sources of female
infertility – and all his argumento assume that women produce seed. The
immediately succeeding chapter (Chapter six of HA X), however, turns to
the issue of whether or not females contribute to conception at all and
uses birds and grasshoppers to illustrate that they do, citing the production
of ‘wind-eggs’. This may seem, at first blush, strong evidence to support
the position of OFR. However, from the several references in OFR to the
possibility of the womb drawing in a woman’s semen unmixed with a
man’s after erotic dreams, we might have expected the author to have ar-
gued that an analogous condition could develop in women, but this is not
the case.45 The last two chapters of HA X use wind-eggs to undercut –
rather than validate – the claims made about a woman’s emissions in
OFR.
After introducing the topic of wind-eggs, Chapter six of HA X con-
tinues with a rehearsal of observations cited in OFR that are in accordance
with claims made in Aristotle’s biological works: women emit fluid in
dreams like men do and suffer the same debilitation after the emission.
The author then reiterates OFR’s conclusion from this evidence: that seed
is emitted by both man and women. He proceeds to re-state OFR’s argu-
ment that women emit into the area before the womb where the man also
ejaculates, and that from there the woman draws the semen into her
womb. He then states the problem he has been working towards: in some
animals, such as birds, this results in wind-eggs, whereas in other animals,
such as horses and sheep it results in nothing. On behalf of Ps-Aristotle,
he then frames a possible answer to the objection that orgasmic emissions
in female animals therefore cannot be seed. The authors first states that
birds do not ejaculate into an area before the womb but into the womb
itself. When a female quadruped ejaculates into the area before her womb
outside of copulation, her seed mingles with other fluids and is not con-

45
The condition OFR calls ‘wind-pregnancy’, which is discussed at 636a9–28, involves
the mingled male and female semen.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 197

stituted in the womb itself because it does not enter it. Here, the author is
clearly thinking of the fluid discharge of female mammals at estrus. The
point of the comparison must be to suggest that in quadrupeds, the female
emission is not drawn into the womb unless it is mixed with the male
contribution. This would explain why, if the female ejaculate at orgasm is
semen, unlike the case in birds, nothing is ever constituted from it in
quadrupeds – or by extension women – and would shore up what might
seem to be a serious weakness in OFR’s theory.
Chapter seven begins with the phrase esti d’enstênai, ‘But there is a
possible objection’ – a standard expression Aristotle uses when he is about
to refute a premise. The author argues that emitting in front of the womb
– rather than directly into it – would not be a sufficient explanation for
why woman (and other quadrupeds) do not produce wind-eggs. If their
wombs can draw in the mingled semen of male and female from this
place, there is no reason why they should not draw in the woman’s un-
mingled semen. The chapter considers the possibility that a uterine mylê is
a form of human wind-egg, but rejects this in favor of an explanation
which attributes the mylê to a mingling of male and female semen held in
a condition of stasis resulting from insufficient heat or cold.46 In the
course of this discussion, the author also claims that the bird’s desire to
emit comes about from fullness, not a sexual desire for the male, as he had
allowed might be the case when he introduced the topic in Chapter six.
The fact that women do not produce wind-eggs, therefore, does refute the
claim of OFR that women ejaculate semen at orgasm.
The chapter ends by explaining that mylê is a rare condition, and that
most cases of false pregnancy have nothing to do with inert semen, but
are rather the result of a confluence of body fluids in the area between the
womb and the belly. This seems to be a denial that the condition ‘wind-
pregnancy’, which OFR discussed at 636a9–28, should be attributed to the
failure of mingled male and female semen to develop as Ps-Aristotle ar-
gued.
The two final chapters of HA X refute the main point made in OFR
and do so in typical Aristotelian fashion. Chapter six opens with a refer-
ence to wind-eggs. Wind-eggs were of particular interest to Aristotle in
establishing the differences in the male and female contributions to
conception, and he referred to them often in his biological works, e.g.,
HA 539a30–b2, 559b20–560a20, GA 730a5–8, 737a30–33, 741a15–32,
750b3–751a25, 757b1–30. Aristotle was also clearly aware of the estrus
cycle and its relation to mammalian fertility, e.g., HA 572b30–573a31 and

46
A mylê, or hydatidiform mole, is an abnormal mass of tissue that very rarely forms in
the womb after an ovum without a nucleus is fertilized and implants in the uterine
wall.

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198 Lesley Dean-Jones

GA 748b20–9, though he mistakenly assimilated it to the menstrual

cycle.47 At HA 541a25–26, he mentions that both male and female quad-
rupeds produce a secretion around their genitalia at breeding time.
The passage in Chapter 7 at 638a10–18 is found virtually verbatim at
GA 775b26–34, with the interesting variant that the passage in HA X
emphasizes the size of the mylê (it is ‘humungous’ eumegethê, 17), perhaps
in response to the discussion of ‘wind-pregnancy’ in OFR, which claimed
that the inert mingling of male and female semen is withered and small
(kataskeleteuetai, smikron 636a15–16). GA 775b34 continues to 776a9
with language that is very similar to the section in OFR at 638b10–15,
but including a rejection of heat as a cause of a mylê; this causation is also
rejected as an explanation between 638a19 and 638b9 in Chapter seven,
but seems to be accepted again by the end of the chapter. The tentative-
ness of the explanation is underscored in the HA passage by the fact that
the author poses a series of questions about the cause of the mylê at
638b1–4 very much in the style of the Peripatetic Problemata, a trope
which we also see in the last two chapters of HA X at 637b36–7 and
638a6–9 but nowhere in OFR.
Unlike the theory espoused in the first five chapters of what has come
down to us as HA X, which is in many places diametrically opposed to
Aristotle’s reproductive theory, the final two chapters share theories and
very explicit language, from his biological works. The best explanation for
how such an amalgam came to be included in the Aristotelian Corpus is
that either Aristotle himself or a later follower of his teachings wrote the
Aristotelian objections to the theory of OFR at the end of the papyrus roll
in which he read it, the whole was mistakenly copied out as a single trea-
tise, and because of the material in the last two chapters attributed to
Aristotle. I believ the annotator was Aristotle himself, following his princi-
ple of giving the endoxa of an auhtority due weight before rejecting them,
but to argue that here would extend the article into an unwieldy length
for a journal.
Of course, it is clear that the extant works of Aristotle were not all
written in the same period of his life and that his ideas did change. On
occasion, he evidently attempted to revise earlier passages as his ideas de-
veloped in order to bring them in line with the more developed views.
While such a process was haphazard and frequently left traces of the ear-
lier unmodified opinions, to leave a whole treatise on generation that var-
ied so much with the exposition of his reproductive theory elsewhere ap-
parently unrevised in any way would be unprecedented. I cannot prove a
negative, but there is little to be gained by insisting that Aristotle wrote
this treatise. In addition, much is explained by accepting it as a treatise

47
See Dean-Jones 1994, 91–2, 187, 229.

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 Clinical gynecology and Aristotle’s biology 199

written by a doctor for use in the clinical practice of his fellow profes-
sionals to which Aristotelian objections have been appended.

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