SUMMARY 367 



by any one of many mechanistic accidents. He may 

 be too large to be born naturally, in that event, if no 

 help is at hand, he dies with his mother ; or his body 

 may be removed in pieces, that his mother may live. 

 In the violence of birth, a blood vessel in the brain of 

 the child may be ruptured and a clot form ; and, in con- 

 sequence of the continued pressure on the brain by this 

 clot, the growth of the brain may be hindered. The 

 brain being defective, the child the man will be 

 permanently defective, and, as such, will be forced to 

 leave the main road of usefulness and happiness and 

 take the byways as a paralytic ; a mechanistic fate. 

 Then again, the blood of a syphilitic mother may im- 

 pair, but not kill, the offspring, which may be born with 

 the disease, perchance to die early, perchance to share 

 the mechanistic fate of his fellow with the brain clot. 



Again the mother of an individual may live in a 

 goiterous region, and in consequence be wanting in 

 thyroid efficiency. The individual, in that event, may 

 be born a cretin. On the other hand, had the mother 

 been given sufficient sheep's thyroid or iodin during 

 pregnancy, she might have borne a normal child in- 

 stead of a cretin ; or the child, if born a cretin, might 

 be made to develop in a normal way by the adminis- 

 tration of thyroid extract. All that stands between 

 the stunted, stupid, dwarfed, defective cretin and the 

 normal child is iodin; between the syphilitic defective 

 and the normal, mercury; between the clot-palsied 

 child and the normal, a surgical operation. 



If, by chance, the mother of an unborn individual be 

 starved to emaciation, the offspring struggles with 

 the mother against starvation ; or if the food of the 



