t this was only his opinion, for I am sure that other men
think differently.

The curious inquirers into the secrets of Nature, have observed, that in
young maidens in the _sinus pudoris_, or in what is called the neck of
the womb, is that wonderful production usually called the _hymen_, but
in French _bouton de rose_, or rosebud, because it resembles the
expanded bud of a rose or a gilly flower. From this the word _defloro_,
or, deflower, is derived, and hence taking away virginity is called
deflowering a virgin, most being of the opinion that the virginity is
altogether lost when this membrane is fractured and destroyed by
violence; when it is found perfect and entire, however, no penetration
has been effected; and in the opinion of some learned physicians there
is neither hymen nor expanded skin which contains blood in it, which
some people think, flows from the ruptured membrane at the first time of
sexual intercourse.

Now this _claustrum virginale_, or flower, is composed of four little
buds like myrtle berries, which are full and plump in virgins, but hang
loose and flag in women; and these are placed in the four angles of the
_sinus pudoris_, joined together by little membranes and ligatures, like
fibres, each of them situated in the testicles, or spaces between each
bud, with which, in a manner, they are proportionately distended, and
when once this membrane is lacerated, it denotes _Devirgination_. Thus
many ignorant people, finding their wives defective in this respect on
the first night, have immediately suspected their chastity, concluding
that another man had been there before them, when indeed, such a rupture
may happen in several ways accidentally, as well as by sexual
intercourse, viz. by violent straining, coughing, or sneezing, the
stoppage of the urine, etc., so that the entireness or the fracture of
that which is commonly taken for a woman's virginity or maidenhead, is
no absolute sign of immorality, though it is more frequently broken by
copulation than by any other means.[2]

And now to say something of the change of the sexes in the womb. The
genital parts of the sexes are so unlike each other in substance,
composition, situation, figure, action and use that nothing is more
unlike to each other than they are, and the more, all parts of the body
(the breasts excepted, which in women swell, because Nature ordained
them for suckling the infant) have an exact resemblance to each other,
so much the