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| British Library Sloane MS 75, f. 87r |
"A weasel placed on a scorpion bite helps greatly... if its heel is taken from it while it still lives and is placed on a woman, she will not get pregnant as long as it is there."
Albertus Magnus, De animalibusAs if you needed another reason to keep a live weasel in your bedroom.
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| Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Portrait of a Woman in Red (1620), Tate |
"The women are troubled with nauseating and loathing of their meat, and oftentimes covet and greedily long for things contrary to Nutriment, as Coals, Rubish, Chalk, Lime, Starch, Oat-meal, raw Flesh and Fish or the like, which desire proceeds from a former contraction of evil humours... some Women as it has been noted by divers Authors of Credit, have been so extravegant in their longings, that they have coveted Hob-Nails, Leather, Horse Flesh, Mans Flesh, and the Flesh of divers ravenous Beasts..."
Aristoteles Master-piece (1684)Forget the home pregnancy test. Have you been craving ravenous beast flesh? Or... oatmeal? Congratulations: you're expecting!
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| Ulisse Aldrovandi, Monstrorum historia (1642) |
"If it happen to be a Male Child, then the right Eye of the Woman will, to appearance, move swifter, and sparkle more than the left... her right Cheek will often glow, and be more ruddy than the left, and indeed the whole colour of her Face more lively than at other times, she feels less Sadness than if she conceived a Female."
Aristoteles Master-piece (1684)If the right side of your face is looking a little bit like an anime character, you're probably having a boy. (Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that the seventeenth century was not hoping for a girl.)
