31. The tyrant Dionysius was aware of the effect of pictures ; for he hung a beautiful picture in his wife's chamber, in order to im prove his children's looks.
32. Two girls (twins) were born with their bodies joined together, their mother having during her pregnancy been in the habit of at tentively contemplating two sacred images similarly placed.
33. A child is born with its skin all mottled in colour from the mother having made a visit to St. Winifred's Well, and seeing the red peb bles there.
34. Another child was marked on the face, in consequence of the mother having worn black patches.
The longings and depraved appetites to which pregnant women are liable are occa sionally the causes of marks and deformities in their children.
3.5. There are a great many instances in which the longing of the mother after straw berries, grapes, cherries, peaches, and other fruits has caused the growth of tumours in the children exactly resembling in each the fruit that was wished for, 36. A woman who had longed for a lobster brings forth a child much resembling one of these animals.
37. Another woman had a female child, the head of which was like a shell-fish (a bivalve, which opened and shut as a mouth), which proceeded from the mother's having had a strong desire for mussels at one time of her preg nancy.
38. A pregnant woman longs, or has a great desire to bite the shoulder of a baker who happens to pass. The husband, wishing to humour this extraordinary fancy, hires the baker to submit to be bitten. The mother makes two bites, but of such a kind that the baker will not submit to more; and some time after wards she is brought to bed of three children, one dead and two living.
39. A case of spina bifida near the sacrum is explained by the mother's having wished for fritters, and not obtaining them, having ap plied her hand (we know not with what object) to a corresponding place in her own body.
The impression on the fancy of the mother may be made before conception has taken place : thus 40 A woman, whose children had pre viously been healthy, six weeks before con ception is suddenly frighted by a beggar who presents a stumped arm and a wooden leg, and threatens to embrace her: the next child had only one stump leg and two stump arms.
The impression on the fancy may extend to the product of several successive conceptions.
41. A young woman frighted in her first pregnancy by the sight of a child with hare-lip, bears a child with a complete deformity of the same kind : her second child had merely a deep slit, and her third no more than a mark in the same place.
We do not wish to argue against this hy pothesis from its prima fitcie absurdity merely; but we think it will be generally admitted that the greater number of the foregoing cases are ridiculous and incredible; inasmuch as simple malformations of structure well known to ana tomists have been regarded as the represen tations of animals and other objects to which they bear a very distant if any resemblance,— cases, in short, in which it is apparent that the imagination of the bye-standers has been more active than that of the mother.
We shall at once admit that we ought not to reject immediately an explanation of the me chanism of a vital function on account of its obscurity merely ; but we assert that the gene ral phenomena of the vital functions are capa ble of being observed and reduced to fixed and general laws, which is certainly by no means the case with the effects of imagination, which are as various and contradictory as they are absurd and ridiculous. The anatomical connection of the maternal uterus and child is so well known that we may with safety affirm that no such communication exists as would be necessary for the transmission of an im pression from the body of the mother to any particular organ of the Rums, and much less any means of conveying mental impressions only. The longings which are said to be so liable to cause injuries of the child seem to act in the same manner whether the appetite is satisfied or not, &c.
But moral reasons are much stronger against the belief. It is obvious that in much the larger proportion of the cases related, the co incidence of the mental impression on the mother with the injury done to the child is a postpartum observation and discovery. The mother and her friends, or the father, if such a deformity shall belong to his side of the house, are desirous of finding an explanation of the blemish which shall not be a stigma upon them ; and in other instances it is to be feared that the idle and talkative women who attend upon child-beds, and even more scientific male accoucheurs, have encouraged the mother's belief in the effect of some alleged previous impression (selected from thousands) on her imagination, in order to hide undue violence employed during the delivery, or perhaps with a less culpable desire to quiet the fears of the mother while in the dangerous puerperal state.