Yes, in the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists really thought this way! More than that, they thought that every baby was already formed and the only thing left to do was to grow up. And women were only seen as “incubators.”

It was only later that people appeared to challenge this opinion. They thought that the origin of life was somewhere in the female body, and the job of the male sperm was to wake life up. As it turns out, none of them were right.