MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS AND TRANSMISSIONS OF 
MUTILATIONS. 
By James E. Thompson, M. B., B. S., London University; F. R. C. S., 
England; Professor of Surgery in the University of Texas. 
Bead December 31, 1892. 
In bringing forward this subject, I have been actuated, not so much 
by the desire of putting any new light on it as of presenting in a concise 
form the consensus of opinion on these various questions. 
Maternal impressions have excited public notice from the very earliest 
times. 
Hippocrates and Galen were firm believers that certain impressions re¬ 
ceived by the mother during pregnancy would be followed by certain 
abnormalities in the child. 
Spartan women when pregnant were required by a law of Lycurgus to 
look upon the statues of Castor and Pollux, in order that their children 
might be beautiful. That this belief was widespread, we have abundant 
evidence. 
Thus in Genesis, chapter 30, verses 37, 38, 39, we find the following: 
“And Jacob took him rods of green poplar and of the hazel and chest¬ 
nut tree, and pilled white streaks in them, and made the white appear 
which was in the rods. 
“And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gut¬ 
ters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they 
should conceive when they came to drink. 
“And the flocks conceived before the rods and brought forth cattle, 
ringstreaked, speckled, and spotted.” 
The literature of the middle ages teems with instances, and this stream 
of folklore pours down to the present day. 
Sir Walter Scott, in the “ Fortunes of Nigil,” attributes the terror 
that James the First experienced at the sight of a sword to the fact that 
his mother, when present at the murder of Rizzio, was pregnant with the 
future king of England. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes founded his story of “Elsie Venner” on a 
maternal impression. 
Every practitioner of medicine can quote numerous stories of this 
nature; and midwives and mothers are still a more prolific source. 
It is not my intention to quote in detail more than a few cases of this 
nature, but these, I hope, will serve as types to illustrate my meaning. 
Many tales are so preposterous that they can be eliminated on a super¬ 
ficial examination: Thus, cases of harelip being attributed to the mother 
( 81 ) 
