For comparison, here are some depictions of the womb, found them on stanford.edu site, sorry I don't know the exact source of all of these!!
Muscio, Gynaecia. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, ms. 3701, f.27r. 9th century.:
![[Image: 3wombs.gif]](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/3wombs.gif)
Leonardo Da Vinci:
![[Image: davinci.gif]](http://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/davinci.gif)
From Vesalius, Tabulae Sex. 1538 (female on the left):
![[Image: vesalius2sexes.gif]](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/vesalius2sexes.gif)
16th C, Pseudo Albertus Magnus:
![[Image: 7celled.gif]](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/7celled.gif)
ETA: the point I forgot to make here is that as you can see in these drawings, by the 16th C there was an idea that the female reproductive system contained two halves.
However, the meaning given to this division was totally different from what we now know (where both ovaries carry out the same job, and one ovary might function and not the other, as is implied by Stellar's interpretation).
They thought that if sperm entered the right side, the child would be a boy, and the left side would be a girl. There were theories that there might be a third cell in the middle which would lead to the birth of hermaphrodites. Even Gabriele Fallopio (16th C), to whom we owe the name of the tubes, actually misrepresented them and failed to understand their exact role.
Well into the 17th century, after dissections became standard, although the parts had been identified it was not yet fully understood what function each part actually served. The idea of one ovary being fertile and the other not is very modern.
So what I am trying to say is that we should not project our current scientific knowledge onto illustrations that were made centuries before any of this was understood.
Muscio, Gynaecia. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, ms. 3701, f.27r. 9th century.:
![[Image: 3wombs.gif]](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/3wombs.gif)
Leonardo Da Vinci:
![[Image: davinci.gif]](http://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/davinci.gif)
From Vesalius, Tabulae Sex. 1538 (female on the left):
![[Image: vesalius2sexes.gif]](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/vesalius2sexes.gif)
16th C, Pseudo Albertus Magnus:
![[Image: 7celled.gif]](https://web.stanford.edu/class/history13/earlysciencelab/body/femalebodypages/7celled.gif)
ETA: the point I forgot to make here is that as you can see in these drawings, by the 16th C there was an idea that the female reproductive system contained two halves.
However, the meaning given to this division was totally different from what we now know (where both ovaries carry out the same job, and one ovary might function and not the other, as is implied by Stellar's interpretation).
They thought that if sperm entered the right side, the child would be a boy, and the left side would be a girl. There were theories that there might be a third cell in the middle which would lead to the birth of hermaphrodites. Even Gabriele Fallopio (16th C), to whom we owe the name of the tubes, actually misrepresented them and failed to understand their exact role.
Well into the 17th century, after dissections became standard, although the parts had been identified it was not yet fully understood what function each part actually served. The idea of one ovary being fertile and the other not is very modern.
So what I am trying to say is that we should not project our current scientific knowledge onto illustrations that were made centuries before any of this was understood.


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