degrees of pressure on the child within, so that the apparently active
movements of the foetus may be really consecutive on unconscious maternal
excitations.[197] We may also believe that, as suggested by John Thomson,
there are slight incoördinations _in utero_, a kind of developmental
neurosis, produced by some slight lack of harmony of whatever origin, and
leading to the production of malformations.[198] We know, finally, that,
as Féré and others have repeatedly demonstrated during recent years by
experiments on chickens, etc., very subtle agents, even odors, may
profoundly affect embryonic development and produce deformity. But how the
mother's psychic disposition can, apart from heredity, affect specifically
the physical conformation or even the psychic disposition of the child
within her womb must remain for the present an insoluble mystery, even if
we feel disposed to conclude that in some cases such action seems to be
indicated.
In comprehending such a connection, however at present
undemonstrated, it may well be borne in mind that the
relationship of the mother to the child within her womb is of a
uniquely intimate character. It is of interest in this
connection to quote some remarks by an able psychologist, Dr.
Henry Rutgers Marshall; the remarks are not less interesting for
being brought forward without any connection with the question of
maternal impressions: "It is true that, so far as we know, the
nervous system of the embryo never has a direct connection with
the nervous system of the mother: nevertheless, as there is a
reciprocity of reaction between the physical body of the mother
and its embryonic parasite, the relation of the embryonic nervous
system to the nervous system of the mother is not very far
removed from the relation of the pre-eminent part of the nervous
system of a man to some minor nervous system within his body
which is to a marked extent dissociated from the whole neural
mass.
"Correspondingly, then, and within the consciousness of the
mother, there develops a new little minor consciousness which,
although but lightly integrated with the mass of her consciousness, nevertheless has its part in her consciousness
taken as a whole, much as the psychic correspondents of the
action of the nerve which govern the secretions of the glands of
the body have their part in her consciousness taken as a whole.
"It is very much as if the optic ganglia developed fully in
themselves, without any closer connection with the rest of the
brain than existed at their first appearance. They would form a
little complex nervous system almost but not quite apart from the
brain system; and it would be difficult to deny them a
consciousness of their own; which would indeed form part of the
whole consciousness of the individual, but which would be in a
manner self-dependent." It must, if this is so, be said that
before birth, on the psychic side, the embryo's activities "form
part of a complex consciousness which is that of the mother and
embryo together." "Without subscribing to the strange stories of
telepathy, of the solemn apparition of a person somewhere at the
moment of his death a thousand miles away, of the unquiet ghost
haunting the scenes of its bygone hopes and endeavors, one may
ask" (with the author of the address in medicine at the Leicester
gathering of the British Medical Association, _British Medical
Journal_, July 29, 1905) "whether two brains cannot be so tuned
in sympathy as to transmit and receive a subtile transfusion of
mind without mediation of sense. Considering what is implied by
the human brain with its countless millions of cells, its
complexities of minute structure, its innumerable chemical
compositions, and the condensed forces in its microscopic and
ultramicroscopic elements--the whole a sort of microcosm of
cosmic forces to which no conceivable compound of electric
batteries is comparable; considering, again, that from an
electric station waves of energy radiate through the viewless air
to be caught up by a fit receiver a thousand miles distant, it is
not inconceivable that the human brain may send off still more
subtile waves to be accepted and interpreted by the fitly tuned
receiving brain. Is it, after all, mere fancy that a mental
atmosphere or effluence emanates from one person to affect
another, either soothing sympathetically or irritating
antipathically?" These remarks (like Dr. Marshall's) were made
without reference to maternal impressions, but it may be pointed
out that under no conceivable circumstance could we find a brain
in so virginal and receptive a state as is the child's in the
womb.
On the whole we see that pregnancy induces a psychic state which is at
once, in healthy persons, one of full development and vigor, and at the
same time one which, especially in individuals who are slightly abnormal,
is apt to involve a state of strained or overstrained nervous tension and
to evoke various manifestations which are in many respects still
imperfectly understood. Even the specifically sexual emotions tend to be
heightened, more especially during the earlier period of pregnancy. In 24
cases of pregnancy in which the point was investigated by Harry Campbell,
sexual feeling was decidedly increased in 8, in one case (of a woman aged
31 who had had four children) being indeed only present during pregnancy,
when it was considerable; in only 7 cases was there diminution or
disappearance of sexual feeling.[199] Pregnancy may produce mental
depression;[200] but on the other hand it frequently leads to a change of
the most favorable character in the mental and general well-being. Some
women indeed are only well during pregnancy. It is remarkable that some
women who habitually suffer from various nervous troubles--neuralgias,
gastralgia, headache, insomnia--are only free from them at this moment.
This "paradox of gestation," as Vinay has termed it, is specially marked
in the hysterical and those suffering from slight nervous disorders, but
it is by no means universal, so that although it is possible, Vinay
states, to confirm the opinion of the ancients as to the beneficial
action of marriage on hysteria, that is only true of slight cases and
scarcely enables us to counsel marriage in hysteria.[201] Even a woman's
intelligence is sometimes heightened by pregnancy, and Tarnier, as quoted
by Vinay, knew many women whose intelligence, habitually somewhat obtuse,
has only risen to the normal level during pregnancy.[202] The pregnant
woman has reached the climax of womanhood; she has attained to that state
toward which the periodically recurring menstrual wave has been drifting
her at regular intervals throughout her sexual life[203]; she has achieved
that function for which her body has been constructed, and her mental and
emotional disposition adapted, through countless ages.
And yet, as we have seen, our ignorance of the changes effected by the
occurrence of this supremely important event--even on the physical
side--still remains profound. Pregnancy, even for us, the critical and
unprejudiced children of a civilized age, still remains, as for the
children of more primitive ages, a mystery. Conception itself is a mystery
for the primitive man, and may be produced by all sorts of subtle ways
apart from sexual connection, even by smelling a flower.[204] The pregnant
woman was surrounded by ceremonies, by reverence and fear, often shut up
in a place apart.[205] Her presence, her exhalations, were of extreme
potency; even in some parts of Europe to-day, as in the Walloon districts
of Belgium, a pregnant woman must not kiss a child for her breath is
dangerous, or urinate on plants for she will kill them.[206] The mystery
has somewhat changed its form; it still remains. The future of the race is
bound up with our efforts to fathom the mystery of pregnancy. "The early
days of human life," it has been truly said, "are entirely one with the
mother. On her manner of life--eating, drinking, sleeping, and
thinking--what greatness may not hang?"[207]
Schopenhauer observed, with
misapplied horror, that there is nothing a woman is less modest about than
the state of pregnancy, while Weininger exclaims: "Never yet has a
pregnant woman given expression in any form--poem, memoirs, or
gynæcological monograph--to her sensations or feelings."[208] Yet when we
contemplate the mystery of pregnancy and all that it involves, how trivial
all such considerations become! We are here lifted into a region where our
highest intelligence can only lead us to adoration, for we are gazing at a
process in which the operations of Nature become one with the divine task
of Creation.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] See, e.g., Groos, _Æsthetische Genuss_, p. 249.
"We have to admit,"
Groos observes, "the entrance of another instinct, the impulse to tend and
foster, so closely connected with the sexual life. It is seemingly due to
the co-operation of this impulse that the little female bird during
courtship is so often fed by the male like a young fledgling. In man
'love' from the biological standpoint is also an amalgamation of two
needs; when the tender need to protect and foster and serve is lacking the
emotion is not quite perfect. Heine's expression, 'With my mantle I
protect you from the storm,' has always seemed to me very characteristic."
Sometimes the sexual impulse may undergo a complete transformation in this
direction. "I believe there is really a tendency in women," a lady writes
in a letter, "to allow maternal feeling to take the place of sexual
feeling. Very often a woman's feeling for her husband becomes this (though
he may be twenty years older than herself); sometimes it does not,
remaining purely sex feeling. Sometimes it is for some other man she has
this curious self-obliterating maternal feeling. It is not necessarily
connected with sex intercourse. A prostitute, who has relations with
dozens of men, may have it for some feeble drunken fool, who perhaps goes
after other women. I once saw the change from sex feeling to mother
feeling, as I call it, come almost suddenly over a woman after she had
lived about four years with a man who was unfaithful to her. Then, when
all real sex feeling, the hatred of the woman he followed, the desire he
should give her love and tenderness, had all gone, came the other feeling,
and she said to me, 'You don't understand at all; he's only my little
baby; nothing he does can make any difference to me now.' As I grow older
and understand women's natures better, I can see almost at once which
relation it is a woman has to her husband, or any given man. It is this
feeling, and not sex passion, that keeps woman from being free." Not only
is there a sexual association in the impulse to foster and protect, there
would appear to be a similar element also in the response to that impulse.
Freud has especially insisted on the partly sexual character of the
child's feelings for those who care for it and tend it and satisfy its
needs. It is begun in earliest infancy; "whoever has seen the sated infant
sink back from the breast, to fall asleep with flushed cheeks and happy
smile, must say that the picture is adequate to the expression of the
sexual satisfaction of later life." The lips, moreover, are the earliest
erogenous zone. "There will, perhaps, be some opposition," Freud remarks
(_Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie_, pp. 36, 64), "to the
identification of the child's feelings of tenderness and appreciation for
those who tend it with sexual love, but I believe that exact psychological
analysis will place the identity beyond doubt. The relationship of the
child with the person who tends it is for it a continual source of sexual
excitement and satisfaction flowing from the erogenous zones, especially
since the fostering person--as a rule the mother--
regards the child with
emotions which proceed from her sexual life; strokes it, kisses it, rocks
it, and very plainly treats it as a compensation for a fully valid sexual
object." Freud remarks that girls who retain the childish character of
their love for their parents to adult age are apt to make cold wives and
to be sexually anæsthetic.
[170] Esbach (in his _Thèse de Paris_, published in 1876) showed that even
the finger nails are affected in pregnancy and become measurably thinner.
[171] C.H. Stratz, _Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_, Chapter VI.
[172] Iron appears to be liberated in the maternal organism during
pregnancy, and Wychgel has shown (_Zeitschrift für Geburtshülfe und
Gynäkologie_, bd. xlvii, Heft II) that the pigment of pregnant women
contains iron, and that the amount of iron in the urine is increased.
[173] Vinay, _Maladies de la Grossesse_, Chapter VIII; K. Hennig,
"Exploratio Externa," _Comptes-rendus du XIIe. Congrès International de
Médècine_, vol. vi, Section XIII, pp. 144-166. A bibliography of the
literature concerning the physiology of pregnancy, extending to ten pages,
is appended by Pinard to his article "Grossesse,"
_Dictionnaire
Encyclopédique des Sciences Médicales_.
[174] Stratz, op. cit., Chapter XII.
[175] W.S.A. Griffith, "The Diagnosis of Pregnancy,"
_British Medical
Journal_, April 11, 1903.
[176] J. Mackenzie and H.O. Nicholson, "The Heart in Pregnancy," _British
Medical Journal_, October 8, 1904; Stengel and Stanton,
"The Condition of
the Heart in Pregnancy," _Medical Record_, May 10, 1902
and _University
Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin_, Sept., 1904 (summarized in _British
Medical Journal_, August 16, 1902, and Sept. 23, 1905.)
[177] J. Henderson, "Maternal Blood at Term," _Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynæcology_, February, 1902; C. Douglas, "The Blood in Pregnant Women,"
_British Medical Journal_, March 26, 1904; W.L.
Thompson, "The Blood in
Pregnancy," _Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin_, June, 1904.
[178] H.O. Nicholson, "Some Remarks on the Maternal Circulation in
Pregnancy," _British Medical Journal_, October 3, 1903.
[179] J. Morris Slemans, "Metabolism During Pregnancy,"
_Johns Hopkins
Hospital Reports_, vol. xii, 1904.
[180] B. Wolff, _Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie_, 1904, No. 26.
[181] Tridandani, _Annali di Ostetrica_, March, 1900.
[182] R. Barnes, "The Induction of Labor," _British Medical Journal_,
December 22, 1894.
[183] See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, _Man and Woman_, fourth edition, pp. 344,
et seq.
[184] Arthur Giles, "The Longings of Pregnant Women,"
_Transactions
Obstetrical Society of London_, vol. xxxv, 1893.
[185] Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, Chapter XXX.
[186] Thus, in Cornwall, "to be in the longing way" is a popular synonym
for pregnancy.
[187] The apple, wherever it is known, has nearly always been a sacred or
magic fruit (as J.F. Campbell shows, _Popular Tales of West Highlands_,
vol. I, p. lxxv. et seq.), and the fruit of the forbidden tree which
tempted Eve is always popularly imagined to be an apple.
One may perhaps
refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the
testicles have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof
of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese
ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the
wars; her sex is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard,
but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from
the apples plucks a citron.
[188] A. Pinard, Art. "Grossesse," _Dictionnaire Encyclopédique des
Sciences Médicales_, p. 138. On the subject of violent, criminal and
abnormal impulses during pregnancy, see Cumston,
"Pregnancy and Crime,"
_American Journal Obstetrics_, December, 1903.
[189] See especially Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, vol.
i, Chapter XXXI.
Ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the foetus adds Loango negroes,
the Eskimo and the ancient Japanese.
[190] In 1731 Schurig, in his _Syllepsilogia_, devoted more than a hundred
pages (cap. IX) to summarizing a vast number of curious cases of maternal
impressions leading to birth-marks of all kinds.
[191] J.W. Ballantyne has written an excellent history of the doctrine of
maternal impressions, reprinted in his _Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The
Embryo_, 1904, Chapter IX; he gives a bibliography of 381 items. In
Germany the history of the question has been written by Dr. Iwan Bloch
(under the pseudonym of Gerhard von Welsenburg), _Das Versehen der
Frauen_, 1899. Cf., in French, G. Variot, "Origine des Préjugés Populaires
sur les Envies," _Bulletin Société d'Anthropologie_, Paris, June 18, 1891.
Variot rejects the doctrine absolutely, Bloch accepts it, Ballantyne
speaks cautiously.
[192] J.G. Kiernan has shown how many of the alleged cases are negatived
by the failure to take this fact into consideration.
(_Journal of American
Medical Association_, December 9, 1899.)
[193] J. Clifton Edgar, _The Practice of Obstetrics_, second edition,
1904, p. 296. In an important discussion of the question at the American
Gynæcological Society in 1886, introduced by Fordyce Barker, various
eminent gynæcologists declared in favor of the doctrine, more or less
cautiously. (_Transactions of the American Gynæcological Society_, vol.
xi, 1886, pp. 152-196.) Gould and Pyle, bringing forward some of the data
on the question (_Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine_, pp. 81, _et
seq._) state that the reality of the influence of maternal impressions
seems fully established. On the other side, see G.W.
Cook, _American
Journal of Obstetrics_, September, 1889, and H.F. Lewis, ib., July, 1899.
[194] _Transactions Edinburgh Obstetrical Society_, vol.
xvii, 1892.
[195] J.W. Ballantyne, _Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo_, p. 45.
[196] W.C. Dabney, "Maternal Impressions," Keating's _Cyclopædia of
Diseases of Children_, vol. i, 1889, pp. 191-216.
[197] Féré, _Sensation et Mouvement_, Chapter XIV, "Sur la Psychologie du
Foetus."
[198] J. Thomson, "Defective Co-ordination in Utero,"
_British Medical
Journal_, September 6, 1902.
[199] H. Campbell, _Nervous Organization of Man and Woman_, p. 206; cf.
Moll, _Untersuchungen über die Libido Sexualis_, bd. i, p. 264. Many
authorities, from Soranus of Ephesus onward, consider, however, that
sexual relations should cease during pregnancy, and certainly during the
later months. Cf. Brénot, _De l'influence de la copulation pendant la
grosseisse_, 1903.
[200] Bianchi terms this fairly common condition the neurasthenia of
pregnancy.
[201] Vinay, _Traité des Maladies de la Grossesse_, 1894, pp. 51, 577;
Mongeri, "Nervenkrankungen und Schwangerschaft."
_Allegemeine Zeitschrift
für Psychiatrie_, bd. LVIII, Heft 5. Haig remarks (_Uric Acid_, sixth
edition, p. 151) that during normal pregnancy diseases with excess of uric
acid in the blood (headaches, fits, mental depression, dyspepsia, asthma)
are absent, and considers that the common idea that women do not easily
take colds, fevers, etc., at this time is well founded.
[202] Founding his remarks on certain anatomical changes and on a
suggestion of Engel's, Donaldson observes: "It is impossible to escape the
conclusion that in women natural education is complete only with
maternity, which we know to effect some slight changes in the sympathetic
system and possibly the spinal cord, and which may be fairly laid under
suspicion of causing more structural modifications than are at present
recognized." H.H. Donaldson, _The Growth of the Brain_, p. 352.
[203] The state of menstruation is in many respects an approximation to
that of pregnancy; see, e.g., Edgar's _Practice of Obstetrics_, plates 6 6
and 7, showing the resemblance of the menstrual changes in the breasts and
the external sexual parts to the changes of pregnancy; cf. Havelock Ellis,
_Man and Woman_, fourth edition, Chapter XI, "The Functional Periodicity
of Woman."
[204] Thus the gypsies say of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant,
"She has smelt the moon-flower"--a flower believed to grow on the
so-called moon-mountain and to possess the property of impregnating by its
smell. Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_, bd. I, Chapter XXVII.
[205] This was a sound instinct, for it is now recognized as an extremely
important part of puericulture that a woman should rest at all events
during the latter part of pregnancy; see, e.g., Pinard, _Gazette des
Hôpitaux_, November 28, 1895, and _Annales de Gynécologie_, August, 1898.
[206] Ploss and Bartels, op. cit., Chapter XXIX; Kryptadia, vol. viii, p.
143.
[207] Griffith Wilkin, _British Medical Journal_, April 8, 1905.
[208] Weininger, _Geschlecht und Charakter_, p. 107. I may remark that a
recent book, Ellis Meredith's _Heart of My Heart_, is devoted to a
seemingly autobiographical account of a pregnant woman's emotions and
ideas. The relations of maternity to intellectual work have been carefully
and impartially investigated by Adele Gerhard and Helena Simon, who seem
to conclude that the conflict between the inevitable claims of maternity
and the scarcely less inevitable claims of the intellectual life cannot be
avoided.
APPENDIX.
HISTORIES OF SEXUAL DEVELOPMENT.
HISTORY I.--The following narrative has been written by a
university man trained in psychology:--
So far as I have been able to learn, none of my ancestors for at
least three generations have suffered from any nervous or mental
disease; and of those more remote I can learn nothing at all. It
appears probable, then, that any peculiarities of my own sexual
development must be explained by reference to the somewhat
peculiar environment.
I was the first child and was, naturally, somewhat spoiled--a
process which tended to increase my natural tendency to
sentimentality. On the other hand, I was shy and undemonstrative
with all except my nearest relatives, and with them as well after
my seventh or eighth year. And here it may be well to describe my
"mental type," as this is probably the most important factor in
determining the direction of one's mental development. Of mental
types the "visual" is, of course, by far the most common, but in
my own case visual imagery was never strong or vivid, and has
constantly grown weaker. The dominant part has been played by
tactual, muscular and organic sensations, placing me as one of
the "tact