PRACTICES TO OBTAIN CHILDREN 71 



Roumanians in Hungary it is the custom that a barren 

 woman eat the dried remains of the navel-string and 

 drink some of the blood. Elsewhere in Hungary a 

 barren woman is given some of the lochial discharge 

 of a woman at her first child-bed. Serb women are 

 advised to bathe in water in which is the placenta of 

 a woman who has just been delivered. Ruthenian 

 women sit on a still warm placenta. Elsewhere in 

 Hungary women follow the Polish practice just 

 mentioned. 1 In Sicily they are prescribed powder 

 of dried after-birth in pills. 2 A Kamtchadal woman 

 who, on bearing, desires to become pregnant soon 

 again, eats her infant's navel-string. 3 Among the 

 Ottoman Jews a woman who has only had one child, 

 and has afterwards ceased to bear, may recover her 

 fertility by eating the foreskin removed from a child 

 by circumcision. 4 In Bombay a childless woman 

 secures a few drops of the water from the first bath 

 or washings of a woman who has been recently 

 delivered, and drinks them. The object seems to be to 

 transfer the fecundity of the one woman to the other : 

 hence precautions are jealously taken against the 

 practice. 5 



Among the Gipsies of Roumania and southern 

 Hungary a sterile woman scratches her husband's left 

 hand between finger and thumb ; and he returns the 



1 Temesvary, 8. It is also believed among the Magyars that the 

 after-birth of a boy or girl placed under the bed will ensure the 

 procreation of a child of the same sex ; but the husband must be 

 careful which side he gets into bed on the right side for a boy, on 

 the left for a girl (von Wlislocki, Volksleb. Mag. So). 



2 Pitre, Biblioteca, xix. 448. 



3 Ploss, Weib, i. 432, citing Kraschnenirnikov. 



4 Mel. viii. 270. 



5 Panjab N. and Q. i. 100 (par. 772). 



