Selected quad for the lemma: woman_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
woman_n	child_n	mother_n	womb_n	3,217	5	9.6644	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A46696	Artificiall embellishments, or Arts best directions how to preserve beauty or procure it.	Jeamson, Thomas, d. 1674.	1665 (1665)	Wing J503; ESTC R17155	74,151	210

that Cupid can scarce walk there without being over shooes Now to sublimate Nature beyond the reach of Sickness to a lasting and aetherial Pulcritude and by cosmetick Antidotes to fortifie it with an incapacity of being supprised by any feature-fretting malady would be a business should puzzle not only a whole Elaboratory of Chymists but their Archeus too although of the privy Council to Nature and confident to her recluded privacies But to make that Lure of Love Beauty of a more than ordinary lustre to fix the Complexion of the Body so that it be not too frequent in its variation or to keep the fair and damask skin from being too much sullied with Deformities filthy fingers is a task not transcending the sphaere of a modest undertaking activity For it is that which hath with happy success been often effected by a convenient regulating the phantasie or imagination of the Mother whilst she is with Child by using food of quick concoction and easie nourishment by moderate and frequent exercise by the application of those things which adorn the body with an enamouring and lively colour by taking away those which may vitiate the features as swarthiness of the Complexion scars and spots of the Skin nasty sweat c. by keeping the body and every member thereof that it be neither too grosse or too lean and the like Concerning all which we intend to give some Directions in the following Chapters of this First Part. CHAP. I. How Women with Child are to order themselves that they may be delivered of fair and handsom Children INtending to furnish you lovely Ladies with such Prescriptions as most neerly concern the beautifying of the Body it will be requisite to begin with some special and singular means how to help the comely formation of the tender Embryo while it is yet in Natures Elaboratory the Wombe that so it may be educed from the confused Chaos of the lesser world not a mishapen or monstrous lump but a sparkling luminary and a piece that Nature may take for a pattern when she attempts the composure of a person she intends to boast of Amongst those several things which tend to this exact compleating of the Foetus there is nothing more signally concurrs than the imagination of the breeding Mother This is that busie Architectrix of the brain which contrives such machinations and acts such miracles that it is a miracle almost to find any that believe them For let but the great-bellyed Mother exercise moderately and use ordinary wholsome diet there will need nothing more to have Children so fair that you may by their own splendor be lighted to view their perfections then the regular ordering of the fancy which is superintendent to the growing infant and the Mothers active emissary that with all obsequiousness executes her wishes on the tender Babe in the Wombe For finding the soft and plyant Faetus pinion'd in a membranious mantle and lying helplesly drowsie in Natures cradle it freely without resistance makes impression as the Mother directs it So that she by the help of this invisible Agent usually works adorns the Infant with those features which her mind most runs upon and she her self affects He that considers the various relations that several Authors make of the Phantasies imperious Tyranny over the growing Embryo will with small reluctancy admit its Plasticks power in a comely composure Helmont makes relation of a Taylors Wife who being big with Child and seeing before her doors a duell betwixt two Souldiers one whereof lost his hand in the combate fell presently being frighted with the sight into labour and was delivered of a Daughter with one hand the other arm bleeding and having the hand cut off at the same place with the maimed Souldier The same Author gives us another story altogether as strange of a Merchants Wise at Antwerp and a familiar acquaintance of his who some weeks before the time of her Delivery hearing that there were thirteen condemned persons to be beheaded was desirous to see them executed and to that purpose gets to a friends house in the Market-place where the windows look'd full out upon the Scaffolds but scarce had she seen the first suffer when she cried out for a Midwife and was delivered of a lovely Boy that had his head newly parted from his shoulders Other Writers also give us the like stories Gassendus in his Philosophy tells us of one great with Child that being set upon by a company of bloody Villains and stab'd in several parts of her body suddenly after died and the Child that was cut out of her Womb had so many blue spots like broises in his body as the Mother had stabbs and in the very same parts wherein she was wounded Munster likewise makes mention of a Woman with Child that standing whispering with another and a third coming softly behind and knocking their foreheads together was soon after delivered of Twins with their foreheads joyned together Besides all this there are yet more stupendious actions which may be reckoned as the products of a working Phancie That Alcippe in Pliny should be delivered of an Elephant that a Woman in Aristotle should be Mother to a Child with a Rams-head or that Plutarcks Matron expecting a Son should be saluted with an ugly Centaure are effects which the most rational heads generally refer to the imagination Now if Phansie or the Imaginative power can transpose the parts of the Foetus and make it a monster if it can turn executioner and set the little Infants soul free from the prison of its body while its body is still prisoner to the womb why may it not as well act the Painter and have the disposing of Natures colours to draw as it pleaseth ravishing or else less inticing features Certainly if we confider what Galen relates of a woman who brought forth a Son not like the Father who was much deformed but resembling a comely picture hanging in her Chamber whereon he wished her to think earnestly when she embraced her Husband Or if we call to mind how some by often looking on a Black-a-moores picture have been delivered of a Child clouded with Natures sooty mask and wrapt in the sable mantle of a swarthy skin we cannot but be convinced that the Infant comes into the world apparel'd with those features which the Phancy that commanding Empress of the Mothers brain dispences from her own wardrobe So that if ye desire Ladies to have Children whose beauty shall ecclipse all other objects and be an attracting magnet to neighbourring eyes propose to your Phancies such patterns as may excite both your own and others admiration whether it be some person who monopolizes perfections and is the royal exchequer of unparallel'd beauty or some lively pencil'd picture of a most absolute proportion of parts temper of colours and vivacity of aspect For some such exquisite pattern being once made choice of and in time of conception or else of being with child often

thought upon and beheld with intensness will by little and little imprint in the mind a noble Idea of the same perfections which the active Phancie soon apprehends as a proposed pattern to work thereby a parallel piece and therefore with an obsequious celerity informs the appetite which immediately summons the subtle humors and the most spirituous parts of the blood as inferiour officers and they receive an impression of this Idea which they carry in triumph through all the coasts of the microcosme till they arrive at those parts whereto they were designed by the direction of their Empress Phancy Who thinking no repository too secure for so fair a species commands those agile emissaries to treasure it up in the seed which is the most new and durable aedifice in all its dominions and likely to last when all the rest shall lye buried in the dust of their final ruines Or if she be intrusted with this Idea in the time of the Mothers being great she immediately sends those active agents with it to the Womb that mint of the microcosme to have it stampt by the Plastick faculty on the growing Foetus that so it may be in a capacity to act its princely part on the theatre of the world where it may attract the eyes of future admirers and with a radiant lustre vye with its Prototype But some of you perhaps may be so scrupulous as to enquire that seeing the Phancie is meerly a cognoscitive faculty and Women usually fix their thoughts on several and various objects during the times of Conception and Gravidation how it comes to pass that we find not the Infant subject to more numerous mutations according to the variety of impressions made by sundry species on the imagination The Reply to this will be easie if we consider that if the matter were more seriously pondred we should not find the Imagination so seldome active as generally is supposed for it is very probable that the resemblance of every child whether with the father mother or any other person hath some near dependance on some operation or other of the mothers Phantasy according as her mind was with more intensness fixt upon such or such a party But yet again it is not every act of the phantasy which is able to affect the formative power residing in the womb but only that which is strong and attended with the powerfull commotion of the spirits and humours in the body So that there being not many acts of the phantasy concomitated with the energie of such commotions 't is no wonder that infants signally affected with the mothers phantasy are so few Those phantasies onely induce such agitations of the humours spirits as are requisite to affect the Foetus which are followed by violent passions of a surprising feare or an earnest longing desire for these are the most turbulent and impetuous passions that the mind is subject to which exciting the tenuious humours and spirits in all parts of the body cause both in the mother and infant remarkable alterations Take but an instance or two of the effects of both these unruly passions Baptista Porta in his natural magick tels us of a woman who amorously affecting a Marble statue dead indeed in it self but for her lust too lively by frequent looking on it and continuall keeping of it in her mind brought forth a sonne plumpe pale of a glittering colour and in every thing representing the features of the too much admired marble Ficinus reports for a truth of a woman that she brought forth a daughter which had a wel proportioned body but for a head onely two Scallop-shels joyned to the shoulders which she opened at pleasure to receive her meat and lived so eleven yeares and that which occasioned the production of this monster was as he says the mothers longing for Scallops whilst she was with child and not being able after great industrie to get any to satisfie her impatient desires So Delrio in his magical disquisitions gives us a relation of a noble Lady that was nurse to a very beautifull prince then Dolphin of France whom she loved so entirely that she caused his effigies to be drawn and carried it about with her scarce induring it out of her sight whereon it hapned that she became mother to a child so like the young Prince that the generality of people knew no other distinction save that of their cloaths And as for the passion of fear Levinus Lemnius hath the history of an unhappy wagge that supprising a great bellied woman with the sight of a boys picture with a monstrous great head caused her to bring forth a child of the same mishapen magnitude These instances are sufficient to demonstrate that the phansie when attended with either of those passions hath power to alter the confirmation and complexion of the yeelding foetus and that to have handsome and beautifull children there is little else required then the avoiding all monstrous objects and stories which may distract the phansie and in their stead the proposing of some amiable object from whence the phantasie affecting it with a passionate tendernesse may coppy out an Idea of perfect beauty to communicate to the plastick facultie whose chiefest care is to erect a stately structure out of the rude masse that lyes so confus'd within the womb This is the opinion of severall antient and excellent Physitians as Hippocrat in his book of Superfoetation Galen in the 14. cap. of his book concerning Theriacle to Piso And Laurentius in his Anatomicall Contraversies l. 8. q. 10. of Wierus Codronchus But enough of these I hasten in the next chapter to give directions what course of life is requisite that those lead who would purchase that they have not or else preserve that beauty they have alreadie CHAP. II. What course of life may probably be the best either to procure Beauty or preserve it COurse of life here mentioned is intended as a generall notion comprehending all those things which Physitians usually terme res non naturales so that it almost takes in whatsoever may cause a sensible alteration in the body as the external aire sleeping and watching repose or exercise evacuation or retention of the excrements passions or perturbations of the mind and lastly meats or drinks whether medicinall or alimentary For each of these as we shall briefly shew do signally affect both body and beauty too First then the aire is that liquid ocean wherein each Pilgrim of us all must traffique if we intend to make thriving husbands or gaine the least addition to the too soon wasted number of our fleeting days It is our more gentle Aeolus that breaths forth prosperous gales into the expanded lobes of our lungs to land us safely at the silver top't Alps of hoary haires But seldome is it that it keeps such an evennesse in in its blasts as not to cause some sensible variation in our beauty that Loadstone of desire For it variously affects the body