Solemn Lessons for Parents.
1. Excessive Pleasures and Pains.—A woman during her time of pregnancy should of all women be most carefully tended, and kept from violent and excessive pleasures and pains; and at that time she should cultivate gentleness, benevolence and kindness.
2. Hereditary Effects.—Those who are born to become insane do not necessarily spring from insane parents, or from any ancestry having any apparent taint of lunacy in their blood, but they do receive from their progenitors certain impressions upon their mental and moral, as well as their physical beings, which impressions, like an iron mould, fix and shape their subsequent destinies. Hysteria in the mother may develop insanity in the child, while drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, in the son. Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children, and the bad treatment of the wife may produce sickly or weak-minded children.
3. The influence of predominant passion may be transmitted from the parent to the child, just as surely as similarity of looks. It has been truly said that "the faculties which predominate in power and activity in the parents, when the organic existence of the child commences, determine its future mental disposition." A bad mental condition of the mother may produce serious defects upon her unborn child.
4. The singular effects produced on the unborn child by the sudden mental emotions of the mother are remarkable examples of a kind of electrotyping on the sensitive surfaces of living forms. It is doubtless true that the mind's action in such cases may increase or diminish the molecular deposits in the several portions of the system. The precise place which each separate particle assumes in the new organic structure may be determined by the influence of thought or feeling. Perfect love and perfect harmony should exist between wife and husband during this vital period.
5. An Illustration.—If a sudden and powerful emotion of a woman's mind exerts such an influence upon her stomach as to excite vomiting, and upon her heart as almost to arrest its motion and induce fainting, can we believe that it will have no effect upon her womb and the fragile being contained within it? Facts and reason then, alike demonstrate the reality of the influence, and much practical advantage would result to both parent and child, were the conditions and extent of its operations better understood.
6. Pregnant women should not be exposed to causes likely to distress or otherwise strongly impress their minds. A consistent life with worthy objects constantly kept in mind should be the aim and purpose of every expectant mother.
CASES CITED.
We selected only a few cases to illustrate the above statement. Thousands of cases occur every year that might be cited to illustrate these principles. A mother cannot be too careful, and she should have the hearty co-operation and assistance of her husband. We quote the following cases from Dr. Pancoast's Medical Guide, who is no doubt one of the best authorities on the subject.
1. A woman bitten on the vulva by a dog, bore a child having a similar wound on the glans penis. The boy suffered from epilepsy, and when the fit came on, or during sleep, was frequently heard to cry out, "The dog bites me!"
2. A pregnant woman who was suddenly alarmed from seeing her husband come home with one side of his face swollen and distorted by a blow, bore a girl with a purple swelling upon the same side of the face.
3. A woman, who was forced to be present at the opening of a calf by a butcher, bore a child with all its bowels protruding from the abdomen. She was aware at the time of something going on within the womb.
4. A pregnant woman fell into a violent passion at not being able to procure a particular piece of meat of a butcher; she bled at the nose, and wiping the blood from her lips, bore a child wanting a lip.
5. A woman absent from home became alarmed by seeing a great fire in the direction of her own house, bore a child with a distinct mark of the flame upon its forehead.
6. A woman who had borne healthy children, became frightened by a beggar with a wooden leg and a stumped arm, who threatened to embrace her. Her next child had one stump leg and two stump arms.
7. A woman frightened in her first pregnancy by the sight of a child with a hare lip, had a child with a deformity of the same kind. Her second child had a deep slit, and the third a mark of a similar character or modified hare lips. In this instance the morbid mind of the mother affected several successive issues of her body.
8. A pregnant woman became frightened at a lizard jumping into her bosom. She bore a child with a fleshy excrescence exactly resembling a lizard, growing from the breast, adhering by the head and neck.