GENERATION. 



477 



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 facie 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 foetus, 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 

 post-partum 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. 

 There is no doubt that there are innumerable 

 instances in which the imagination and all the 

 moral and intellectual powers of women have 

 been highly excited during pregnancy without 

 their children having suffered in any respects ; 

 and there are not wanting instances of chil- 

 dren being born with all kinds of deformity 

 that have been attributed to the effect of 

 imagination, without their being aware of any 

 unusual impression having been made on their 

 minds. 



Again, it may be remarked that the stage of 

 the period of pregnancy at which the injury of 

 the child may take place is by no means de- 

 fined, and that there is no correspondence 

 between the time or advancement of the foetus 

 and the nature of the injury. Some injuries 

 are said to have occurred or to have had their 

 foundation laid at the very moment of con- 

 ception, and even occasionally before that time, 

 while others are inflicted only a few weeks be- 

 fore birth. 



The monstrous appearances or malformations 

 which constitute by far the greater part of the 

 injuries attributed to the mother's imagination, 

 are now no longer regarded as lusus naturae 

 merely, or " sports of nature's fancy," as they 

 used to be called ; but the times at which 

 many of them must have occurred are known 

 with some degree of certainty, and these times 

 by no means correspond with the periods at 

 which the imagination is said to have been 

 affected. Besides this, nearly the whole of 

 congenital malformations have been accurately 

 anatomised, and their structure is reduced to 

 general laws as regular and determinate in 

 each individual form as the more usual or so- 

 called natural structure. See MONSTROSITY. 



In this question, as in others of a like kind, 

 reference has been made to scriptural autho- 

 rity, in the history, viz. of Jacob's placing the 

 peeled black and willow rods before the ewes 

 which went to drink and afterwards conceived. 

 But any one who pays the slightest attention 

 to the whole of this relation will at once be 

 convinced that the sacred writer, in describing 

 the proceeding of Jacob, exhibits merely that 

 patriarch's belief in the efficacy of such means; 

 for in a subsequent part of the chapter Jacob 

 is undeceived by the angel, who appears to him 

 in a dream and informs him of the real" cause 

 of the multiplication of the speckled lambs, 

 &c. viz. the circumstance that the ring-straked, 

 speckled, and spotted males had leaped upon 

 the females, and that the progeny therefore 

 merely inherited their colour from their fathers. 

 We now leave this unsatisfactory subject, 

 upon which we have perhaps dwelt longer than 

 it deserves. We have introduced the foregoing 

 remarks partly in accordance with custom, and 

 also with a view to shew how little connection 

 exists between the facts of our subject and the 

 vague fancies to which allusion has been made. 

 In doing so we are aware that we are liable to 

 the accusation, on the one hand, of having 

 treated with too much levity facts and ob- 

 servations upon which some are disposed im- 

 plicitly to rely, and, on the other, of trifling 

 with science in noticing even such vain fancies 

 as belong to pregnant women and their atten- 

 dant nurses. 



We conclude by adopting and expressing 

 the opinion of Dr. Blundell, " that it is con- 

 trary to experience, reason, and anatomy to 

 believe that the strong attention of the mother's 

 mind to a determinate object or event can 

 cause a determinate or a specific impression 

 upon the body of her child without any force 

 or violence from without; and that it is equally 

 improbable that, when the imagination is ope- 



