the cathar nymph and her victory over birth

[peteb]

I suspect they knew more than we realize.

Even if they weren't allowed to dissect humans, they were regularly dissecting dogs and other animals at the medical schools, and butchers were opening up carcasses to anything that was eaten.

Reproductive anatomy wasn't well understood or documented, but I'm certain it must have been explored in some sense of the word. Part of the reason it wasn't documented was because of the prohibitions against discussing such things and... even if you got the information from looking at a horse, a pig, or a dog, if you diagrammed it, you might be accused of having looked inside a human.

The Spanish inquisitors would take a dim view indeed of an image of a woman holding aloft her reproductive organs, don't you think, JKP?