Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / [Amariah Brigham].

  • Amariah Brigham
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / [Amariah Brigham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    adults, but i\vey predisjjose the next generation to this terrible disease; and this is a fact that deserves great consideration. Esquirol says that many women, strongly affected by the events of the Revolution, bore children whom the slightest cause rendered insane. He is supported by others in this opinion, that strong mental emotion of the mother predisposes the offspring to insanity. Children do not, indeed, often become insane though they do occasional!}', from strong mental excite- ment, and injudicious development of the moral facul- [6‘i “ I confess myself a participator in the vulgar belief that im- pressions made upon the mother’s mind during pregnancy may afl'ect the offspring. There are many cases to prove this. Mr. Bennett relates a very striking one in the ‘ London Medical and Physical Journal.’ A woman gave birth to a child vvitli a large cluster of globular tumours growing from the tongue, and prevent, ing the closure of the mouth, in colour, shape, and size e.'cactly resembling our common grapes; and with a red e.xcrescence from the chest as e.xactly resembling in figure and general appearance a turkey’s wattles. On being questioned, before the child was shown her, she answered that, while pregnant, she had seen some grapes, longed intensely for them, and constantly thought of them, and once was attacked by a turkey cock. James VI. of Scotland had a great abhorrence of a drawn sword, and was, withal, timid and cowardly; which difference of character from that of all the line of Stuart which preceded and followed him, has been attributed, not irra. tionally, to the circumstance of Rizzio having been butchered before the eyes of Queen Mary, then enceinte with the future monarch. According to Esquirol, the children whose existence dated from the horrors of the first French Revolution turned out to be weak, nerv- ous, and irritable in mind, extremely susceptible of impressions, and liable to be thrown, by the least extraordinary excitement, into absolute insanity. The story of Jacob and the rods, as related in the 30th chapter of Genesis, is a proof of the belief in ancient times that parental impressions may affect the offspring.’’—MacraiiA’* Introduction to Phrenology, p. 131.]