On the inspection of the abdomen of a pregnant woman there will be noticed a brown line which extends from the umbilicus to the pubes, and all over the surface the presence of striae, or long purple grooves, due to the distention of the abdomen; on the sides of the abdomen and down the thighs, red, blue, or white markings, like cicatrices, may be seen.
Quickening. Quickening is the sensation experienced by the mother as the result of the active fetal movements of the child in the womb. These movements are first felt between the eighteenth and the twentieth week; the common rule is that quickening occurs at the middle of pregnancy; that is, at four and a half months. As pregnancy advances these active motions increase in frequency and become more marked. When felt or seen by the physician, as can be done in the sixth month, fetal movements constitute a positive sign of pregnancy.
The Determination of Sex at Will. Although this has always been a question of great interest, and the subject of much experimentation, no rule can as yet be given by which the parents can know in advance of the birth of the child what the sex will be. Dr. Schenck's theory is that the ruling factor in determining the sex is the food partaken of by the mother.
Furst believes that the differentiation may occur before, during, and a little while after the impregnation; that the chances of the development of one or another sex in one and the same woman may vary before final differentiation occurs. It is impossible to determine the sex of the embryo before the tenth week of fetal life. The cause of the differentiation, he believes, lies largely in the good or bad state of the health of the parents; in the first instance there being an excess of females, and in the latter an excess of males, relatively speaking. He believes that there is an excess of male children when conception takes place during the post-menstrual anemia. He has investigated one hundred and ninety-three cases carefully in regard to the probable date of conception after menstruation, and there is a notable increase of male births over female in the cases where conception occurred in the first five days after menstruation; that is to say, where the woman is not so well nourished as later.
Dr. J. Griffith Davis gives as the result of her experiments in this direction, that when conception takes place three days before the menstrual period or within forty-eight hours afterward, the child will be a girl; when conception takes place ten days after the period, the child will be a boy.
Although there are a greater number of the female than the male sex in all parts of the world where reliable statistics have been taken, in all civilized countries the proportion of male births is greater than that of females. There is a greater tendency of the male offspring to die earlier, and this is seen even before birth, in the proportion of three to two. For this reason the stronger sex as applied to men has been regarded by some authors as a misnomer. They are physically weaker in early life and succumb more readily to noxious influences.
The relative age of the parents is said to be another factor in determining the sex of the children. Seniority on the father's side gives an excess of male children; equality in the age of the parents gives a slight preponderance of females; seniority on the mother's side gives an excess of females. Men, and especially scholars, who pass a sedentary life and who exhaust their nervous force to a great extent, beget more girls than boys; so, also, a very advanced age on the part of the man diminishes the number of male offspring.
The Influence of the Male Sexual Element on the Female Organism. Dr. Alexander Harvey, of Aberdeen, has adopted the theory of fetal inoculation. He believes that the effect is first due to the influence of the male element upon the ovum, which, in consequence of the subsequent close attachment and freely inter-communicating blood-vessels between the modified embryo and the mother, inoculates the condition of the mother with the qualities of the male; and so, on the subsequent impregnation by another male, the offspring resembles the first male and not its real parent. He even goes further, and says that it is conceivable, by successive impregnations effected by him, that the influence may be increased, and if so the younger children begotten by him, rather than the elder, might be expected, ceteris paribus, to bear their father's image. And as regards the mother, he suggests the question, whether there is not something in the popular notion that in the course of years the wife comes to resemble the husband; and that not merely in respect of temper, disposition, or habits of thought, but in bodily appearance, which may be referable to this influence exerted by the husband on her constitution, through the medium of the fetuses in utero.
"Yet it shall be; thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is the wife is; thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse."
Darwin, on the other hand, considers it a most improbable hypothesis that the mere blood of one individual should affect the reproductive organs of another individual in such a manner as to affect the subsequent offspring. The analogy, he says, from the direct action of the foreign pollen on the ovaries and seed coats of the mother plant strongly supports the belief that the male element acts directly on the reproductive organs of the female, and not through the intervention of the crossed embryo.