58 Conception, Birth and Infancy in 



in studying human culture and the forms in which it has been 

 transmitted from age to age. Moreover, it is obvious that in such 

 a relatively poor country as Italy has long been and must now, we 

 fear, long continue to be, legitimate medicine fails to provide ade- 

 quately for the needs of an enormous number of people. Even 

 among the more prosperous citizens a doctor may lack such inti- 

 macy with a family under his charge as would acquaint him with 

 much that his patients may do when he is not around to outrage 

 science and even the dictates of common sense. My study of 

 folklore leads me to believe that medical practitioners everywhere 

 have this handicap to a greater degree than such busy men can 

 fully realize. While I have put in my notes only a few references 

 to English and American parallels, I commend them particularly 

 to any physician who may read this book. Familiarity with such 

 lore will convince him that there are superstitions which have 

 shown a tenacity of life that almost justifies our terming them im- 

 mortal, and which have a power to harm that makes them some- 

 thing more than negligible absurdities for his profession. 



We may well believe that reproduction in human beings is still 

 physically quite what it was when Cain and Abel were begotten, 

 carried, and then delivered, the first of earth's children, according 

 to our Biblical account, but what Adam and Eve did to their sons 

 during gestation and infancy has perhaps never been precisely 

 duplicated by any parents within these last two thousand years. 

 Nature no longer has her primeval way with the beginnings of man. 

 Man interferes in countless particulars. If, however, baby Caesar, 

 baby Vergil, or baby Pliny, not to mention any babies of the then 

 less favored sex, were introduced among a score of children of the 

 same age in an Italian nursery, I am sure that identification tags 

 would be necessary to differentiate them from the rest. It is 

 pleasant to think, too, that during their opening years of life they 

 would all play happily together, having none of the thoughts of 

 their stupid elders about race, color, creed, or social origin to dis- 

 turb their peace or prospects. Yes, it is what these elders would 

 think and do, sensible and nonsensical, that would so greatly affect 

 their start in life, whether they were to exist and die in the slums, 

 unknown to fame and fortune, or were to grow up a Caesar or 

 Vergil, a Mussolini or D'Annunzio. That "chance makes our par- 

 ents" can still be man's worst mischance. 



