CAUSE.

The cause of this suppression is either external or internal. The
external cause may be heat or dryness of air, want of sleep, too much
work, violent exercise, etc., whereby the substance is so consumed, and
the body so exhausted that nothing is left over to be got rid of, as is
recorded of the Amazons who, being active and constantly in motion, had
their courses very little, if at all. Or it may be brought about by cold
which is very frequent, as it vitiates and thickens the blood, and binds
up the passages, so that it cannot flow out.

The internal cause is either instrumental or material; in the womb or in
the blood. In the womb, it may be in various ways; by humours, and
abscesses and ulcers, by the narrowness of the veins and passages, or by
the adipose membrane in fat bodies, pressing on the neck of the matrix,
but then they must have hernia, zirthilis, for in men the membrane does
not reach so low; by too much cold or heat, the one vitiating the
action, and the other consuming the matter through the wrong formation
of the uterine parts; by the neck of the womb being turned aside, and
sometimes, though rarely, by a membrane or excrescence of the flesh
growing at the mouth or neck of the womb. The blood may be in fault in
two ways, in quantity and in quality; in quantity, when it is so
consumed that no surplus is left over, as in viragoes or virile women,
who, through their heat and natural strength, consume it all in their
last nourishment; as Hippocrates writes of Prethusa, for when her
husband praised her overmuch, her courses were suppressed, her voice
changed and she got a beard with a manly face. But I think, rather that
these must be _Gynophagi_, or woman-eaters, rather than women-breeders,
because they consume one of the principles of generation, which gives a