The Placenta in Lore and Legend

摘要

SPECULATION regarding the meanings and mechanisms of "Birth, Copulation, and Death" has intrigued not only philosophers and priests, scientists, poets, and artists, but all Mankind. Possibly there are no other topics that have gathered about them such a welter of imaginative conjecture, ritualistic formality, taboo, and downright misinformation. Whether we are nearer understanding these mysteries is controversial metaphysics which concerns us greatly, but not here. Whether we are nearer understanding the mechanisms of these things surely demands the reply that we are, but not much.