Volume 1

A system of obstetric medicine and surgery : theoretical and clinical for the student and practitioner / by Robert Barnes and Fancourt Barnes.

Date:
1884-1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A system of obstetric medicine and surgery : theoretical and clinical for the student and practitioner / by Robert Barnes and Fancourt Barnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    CHAP. XIII. between these twd extremes of unreason ? We believe there is, but we cannot indulge in it here. We will simply try to state the case. A woman brings forth a foetus, single or double, presenting some deformity. She or her friends then recollect that at some time during gestation she had been impressed by some object more or less resembling the misshapen child. It has been objected—1, that the ' impression ' was an after-thought hunted up in the memory, and greatly an image built up after the birth upon slender foundation; 2, that if there had been any ' impression,' it was so slight and transient that it could not be supposed to have had any influence ; 3, that very marked ' im- pressions ' are often experienced by women during gestation, exciting in them the dread that the child will be affected, and yet the child is bom faultless; 4, that if occasionally a mon- strosity is born to a woman who had made known an' impression' at the time it was received, it must be regarded as a coinci- dence ; 5, that deformities, similar to those which have been ascribed to mental impressions, are frequently observed where no such impressions have been noticed; 6, that the deformities can all be traced to faults of development which admit of inter- pretation according to the known laws of embryology ; 7, that it is not possible to understand how an embryo which has followed the normal development down to the moment of the alleged impression can thence undergo changes of form—for example, an anencephalous foetus is born: how can the sight of an anencephalous child destroy the brain of a fogtus developed to five months ? 8, that monstrosities are frequent in the lower animals, and in birds, and in plants ; 9, that many deformities and peculiarities may be traced to heredity, especially from the father. How do we account for women, married to mutilated men without legs or arms, bringing forth well-formed chil- dren ? The followinor facts deserve attention. Mares are known to bring forth foals bearing the characters of the sire, and this not once but several times, although the subsequent foals have been begotten by different horses from the first. Thus Eollins asserts that the common mule fi-om the ass and horse is parti- cularly apt to have bars on its legs. According to ]\'Ir. Gosse, in certain parts of the United States about nine mules out of ten