“… Notions of seminality, which underpinned early modern interest in fertility, have a complex trajectory, interweaving Augustinian, Platonic, Stoic, and atomist ideas. See Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica 1: 541, 179, Religio Medici, 1.50, Works 1.62; Boyle, Works , 13.277; discussed in Killeen, Anstey, Hirai.…”