Part 15 (1/2)

_Prevention._--The eminent pract.i.tioner, Dr. Tilt, says, 'The way to prevent miscarriage is to lead a quiet life, particularly during those days of each successive month when, under other circ.u.mstances, the woman would menstruate; and to abstain during those days not only from long walks and parties, but also from s.e.xual intercourse.'

It is especially desirable to avoid a miscarriage in the first pregnancy, for fear that the habit of miscarrying shall then be set up, which it will be very difficult to eradicate. Therefore newly-married women should carefully avoid all causes which are known to induce the premature expulsion of the child. If it should take place in spite of all precautions, extraordinary care should be exercised in the subsequent pregnancy, to prevent its recurrence. Professor Bedford of New York has said he has found that an excellent expedient in such cases is, as soon as pregnancy is known to exist, 'to interdict s.e.xual intercourse until after the fifth month; for if the pregnancy pa.s.s beyond this period, the chances of miscarriage will be much diminished.'

If the _symptoms of miscarriage_, which may be expressed in the two words _pain_ and _flooding_, should make their appearance, the doctor ought at once to be sent for, the wife awaiting his arrival in a rec.u.mbent position. He may even then be able to avert the impending danger. At any rate, his services are as necessary, and often even more so, as in a labor at full term.

MOTHER'S MARKS.

It is a popular belief that the imagination of the mother affects the child in the womb. It is a.s.serted that infants are often born with various marks and deformities corresponding in character with objects which had made a vivid impression on the maternal mind during pregnancy.

This is a subject of great practical interest. We shall therefore give it the careful attention which it deserves.

We have already discussed the operation of the laws of inheritance. It was then stated that the whole story of maternal influence had not been told--that the mother could communicate qualities she never possessed.

The potency of imagination at the time of conception over the child has been mentioned. It is now our design to consider its effects, during the period of pregnancy, upon the physical structure and the mental attributes of the offspring. We shall have occasion hereafter, in speaking of nursing, to ill.u.s.trate the manner in which the child may be affected by maternal impressions acting through the mother's milk. What can be more wonderful than this intimate union between the mother and her child? It is only equaled by that mysterious influence of the husband over the wife, by which he so impresses her system that she often comes in time to resemble him both in mental and physical characteristics, and even transmits his peculiarities to her children by a second marriage. Father, mother, and child are one.

We wish here to premise that our remarks will be based upon the conclusions of skilled and scientific observers only, whose position and experience no medical man will question. All the instances to be related are given upon unimpeachable authority. They are not the narrations of ignorant, credulous people; they are all fully vouched for. We record here, as elsewhere, only the sober utterances of science. The great importance and utility of an acquaintance with them will be patent to every intelligent man and woman.

The effect of the mind upon the body is well known. Strong, long-continued mental emotion may induce or cure disease. Heart disease may be produced by a morbid direction of the thoughts to that organ.

Warts disappear under the operation of a strong belief in the efficacy of some nonsensical application. In olden time, scrofula, or the 'king's evil', was cured by the touch of the king. The mind of the patient, of course, accomplished the cure. Under the influence of profound mental emotion, the hair of the beautiful Marie Antoinette became white in a short time. During the solitary voyage of Madame Condamine down the wild and lonely Amazon, a similar change took place. Many other instances might be adduced; but those given are sufficient to show that strong and persistent mental impressions will exert a mysterious transforming power over the body. These facts will pave the way to the consideration of corresponding effects, through the mother's mind, upon the development of the unborn child, forming a part of herself _in utero._

_Influence of mind of mother on form and color of infant._--There are numerous facts on record which prove that _habitual_, long-continued mental conditions of the mother at an early period of pregnancy, induce deformity or other abnormal development of the infant.

Professor William A. Hammond of New York relates the following striking case, which occurred in his own experience, and which scarcely admits of a doubt as to the influence of the maternal mind over the physical structure of the ftus.

A lady in the third month of her pregnancy was very much horrified by her husband being brought home one evening with a severe wound of the face, from which the blood was streaming. The shock to her was so great that she fainted, and subsequently had a hysterical attack, during which she was under Dr. Hammond's care. Soon after her recovery she told him that she was afraid her child would be affected in some way, and that even then she could not get rid of the impression the sight of her husband's b.l.o.o.d.y face had made upon her. In due time the child, a girl, was born. She had a dark red mark upon the face, corresponding in situation and extent with that which had been upon her father's face.

She also proved to be idiotic.

Professor Dalton of New York states that the wife of the janitor of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of that city, during her pregnancy, dreamed that she saw a man who had lost a part of the ear. The dream made a great impression upon her mind, and she mentioned it to her husband. When her child was born, a portion of one ear was deficient, and the organ was exactly like the defective ear she had seen in her dream. When Professor Dalton was lecturing upon the development of the ftus as affected by the mind of the mother, the janitor called his attention to the foregoing instance. The ear looks exactly as if a portion had been cut off with a sharp knife.

Professor J. Lewis Smith of Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, has met with the following cases:--An Irishwoman, of strong emotions and superst.i.tions, was pa.s.sing along a street, in the first months of her pregnancy, when she was accosted by a beggar, who raised her hand, dest.i.tute of thumb and fingers, and in 'G.o.d's name' asked for alms. The woman pa.s.sed on, but, reflecting in whose name money was asked, felt that she had committed a great sin in refusing a.s.sistance. She returned to the place where she had met the beggar, and on different days, but never afterwards saw her. Hara.s.sed by the thought of her imaginary sin, so that for weeks, according to her statement, she was distressed by it, she approached her confinement. A female infant was born, otherwise perfect, but lacking the fingers and thumb of one hand. The deformed limb was on the same side, and it seemed to the mother to resemble precisely that of the beggar. In another case which Professor Smith met, a very similar malformation was attributed by the mother of the child to an accident occurring, during the time of her pregnancy, to a near relative, which necessitated amputation. He examined both of these children with defective limbs, and has no doubt of the truthfulness of the parents. In May, 1868, he removed a supernumerary thumb from an infant, whose mother, a baker's wife, gave the following history:--No one of the family, and no ancestor, to her knowledge, presented this deformity. In the early months of her pregnancy she sold bread from the counter, and nearly every day a child with a double thumb came in for a penny roll, presenting the penny between the thumb and the finger. After the third month she left the bakery, but the malformation was so impressed upon her mind, that she was not surprised to see it reproduced in her infant.

In all these cases the impression was produced in the early months of pregnancy; but many have been recorded in which malformations in the infant appeared distinctly traceable to strong mental emotions of the mother only a few months previous to confinement, these impressions having been persistent during the remaining period of the pregnancy, and giving rise to a full expectation on the part of the mother that the child would be affected in the particular manner which actually occurred. Professor Carpenter, the distinguished physiologist, is personally cognisant of a very striking case of the kind which occurred in the family of a near connection of his own.

All the above instances have been those of the effects of persistent mental emotion. But it is also true that _violent and sudden emotion_ in the mother leaves sometimes its impress upon the unborn infant, although it may be quickly forgotten.

It is related on good authority that a lady, who during her pregnancy was struck with the unpleasant view of leeches applied to a relative's foot, gave birth to a child with the mark of a leech coiled up in the act of suction on the intended spot.

Dr. Delacoux of Paris says that, in the month of January 1825, he was called to attend a woman in the village of Batignoles, near Paris, who the evening before had been delivered of a six months' ftus, horribly deformed. The upper lip was in a confused ma.s.s with the jaw and the gums, and the right leg was amputated at the middle, the stump having the form of a cone. The mother of this being, who was a cook, one morning, about the third month of her pregnancy, on entering the house where she was employed, was seized with horror at the sight of a porter with a hare-lip and an amputated leg.

At a meeting of the Society of Physicians at Berlin, in August 1868, Herr Dupre stated that a woman saw, in the first weeks of her third pregnancy, a boy with a hare-lip; and not only was the child she then carried born with a frightful hare-lip, but also three children subsequently. Another one, a woman in the fifth week of pregnancy, saw a sheep wounded, and with its bowels protruding. She was greatly shocked, and did not recover her composure for several days. She was delivered at term of a child, in other respects well developed, but lacking the walls of the abdomen.

Many remarkable instances have been collected of the power of _imagination_ over the unborn offspring.

Ambrose Pare, the ill.u.s.trious French surgeon of the sixteenth century, in one of his treatises devotes a chapter to the subject of 'monsters which take their cause and shape from imagination,' and was evidently a strong believer in this influence.

A black child is generally believed to have been born to Marie Therese, the wife of Louis XIV., in consequence of a little negro page in her service having started from a hiding-place and stumbled over her dress early in her pregnancy. This child was educated at the convent of Moret, near Fontainebleau, where she took the veil, and where, till the shock of the Revolution, her portrait was shown.

Examples are given by authors of the force of _desires_ in causing deformities in infants, and the formation upon them of fruits, such as apples, pears, grapes, and others, which the mother may have longed for.