In some cases the menses persist during pregnancy up to the very last;
but the result in these cases is that the offspring are poor, and
either fail to survive or grow up weakly.
In many cases, owing to excessive desire, arising either from
youthful impetuosity or from lengthened abstinence, prolapsion of
the womb takes place and the catamenia appear repeatedly, thrice in
the month, until conception occurs; and then the womb withdraws
upwards again to its proper place...
As we have remarked above, the discharge is wont to be more
abundant in women than in the females of any other animals. In
creatures that do not bring forth their young alive nothing of the
sort manifests itself, this particular superfluity being converted
into bodily substance; and by the way, in such animals the females are
sometimes larger than the males; and moreover, the material is used up
sometimes for scutes and sometimes for scales, and sometimes for the
abundant covering of feathers, whereas in the vivipara possessed of
limbs it is turned into hair and into bodily substance (for man
alone among them is smooth-skinned), and into urine, for this
excretion is in the majority of such animals thick and copious.
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