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.
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.
See especially Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter XXXI. Ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the fœtus adds Loango negroes, the Eskimo and the ancient Japanese.