We can readily believe that all sudden or violent changes in the functions of the mo ther, demincrnents of the general circulation, nervous affections, and other circumstances which tend to disturb the uterine function, must cause or he liable to occasion injury to the ileitis or its coverings during pregnancy. So also we can understand that any violent affection of the mind of a pregnant woman, in so far as it tends to derange the bodily func tions, may produce some effect on the nutrition of the child.
Some contagious diseases pass from the mo ther to the child in utero. Syphilis and small pox may be mentioned as those the effects of which have been most frequently observed.• Typhous fever, on the other hand, is said rarely to affect the child. We know also that severe affections of the mother may cause the death of the child, and its premature expulsion or abor tion. According to Ilausmann, the effect of variations of the external atmosphere is visible in the unusual number of blind colts and hydro cephalic pigs which are born after a wet sum mer. Malformations of the foetus of birds have been artificially produced by external injuries and altered position of the eggs during ineuba tion.t The transmission to the child of the effects of chemical poisons taken by the mother has also been observed ; but in all the foregoing the effect of the injury has been more or less general ; and there is no sufficient reason to conclude from them that a particular impres sion on the mind of the mother is capable of producing physical injury, or a particular de formity in one or other of the organs of the flatus.
A vague notion is entertained by some that a certain influence is exerted by the lien or other bird on the eggs that they incubate, by which the qualities of the progeny are modified. But we must observe that hereditary resemblances arc preserved in artificial incubation without the hen; and although we are disposed to ad mit that the female bird incubates its eggs with an instinctive care and perfection that art can rarely imitate, we are exceedingly sceptical as to the possibility of any other secret influence from the oviparous mother to its offspring once the eggs have left the body ; and the attempt to support the theory of imagination by this opinion is an explanation of the obscurum per obscurius.
Were it possible to separate the better authen ticated from the more fanciful relations of the effects of the mother's imagination, or to select those instances only in which the impression on the mind of the mother had been carefully noted before the birth of the child, we might expect in some degree to be able to free this question from the falsity and prejudice which obscures it. But such a separation we believe to be impossible, and we have therefore re solved to enumerate shortly some of the more remarkable cases taken at random,: from which we think the reader will hest be able to judge what value or faith is to be attached to the facts now under consideration.
In a certain number of these cases we are told that an injury of an organ in the mother causes a similar injury in a corresponding part of the child's body ; as in the following ex amples.
1. A cow killed by the blow of a hatchet is found pregnant of a flatus with a bruise on the same place of the forehead.
2. The same was the case with the young one of a hind that had been shot.
3. A pregnant cat which had had its tail trodden on bore five young, in four of which the tail was similarly wounded.
4. A woman bitten on the pudenda by a dog bore a boy having a wound of the glans penis. This boy suffered from epilepsy, and when the fits came on during sleep was frequently heard to call aloud, " the dog bites me I " There are other similar cases on record.
5. A pregnant woman walking with a friend has her head knocked violently against her friend's, and shortly afterwards bears twins, which are joined together by the foreheads.
6. A gentlewoman who was cut for rupture in the groin during her pregnancy, bears a boy having a large scar in the same region, which he bore for thirty years afterwards.
The injuries of others operating on the ima gination of the mother may affect the structure of the child : thus 7. A woman who was suddenly alarmed by seeing her husband come home with one side of his face swollen and distorted by a blow, bears a child (a girl) with a purple swelling covering the forehead, nose, &e. of the same side.