Frightened at a mole.—I went out eleven miles from G. C., state of ——, to study a very sad case in the home of a cultured young couple. The child was two years old. Its hands were turned with the palms backwards and its arms were not over six inches long. It preferred to crawl rather than walk. On the floor it handled itself like a mole. The mother told me that in the early months of gestation she was greatly frightened at a mole.
Marked by anger.—While giving a course of lectures in the city of C., Missouri, one day while walking down a street I noticed a four-year-old white-headed boy with a big patch of jet-black hair on the right side of his head. The contrast between the black and the white was very striking. The father told me that he and his wife were undecided what one of two possible causes was responsible for the birthmark. He said, “One day, while my wife stood on the back porch, a negro stabbed a man and when he saw an officer approaching he leaped over our yard fence and ran across our back yard. Seeing that he was running into the arms of another officer, he threw down his knife in the deep grass. The next day he got out on bail and came to our home and asked for permission to look for his knife. The other possible cause was, my wife and her neighbor had fallen out. One day this lady called at our home and my wife considered her an intruder, the old trouble was renewed and my wife pulled her hair. This lady had very black hair. Now we do not know which of those occurrences is responsible for the patch of black hair on the boy.” I replied, “I know with almost absolute certainty.” He asked for my opinion and reason. My reply was, “Had it been caused by the negro, the patch of black hair would have been kinky. Nature is always true to itself. I once knew a case where a mother was frightened by an angry dog and on her child was a patch of canine hair. The fact that the hair in the mark on the child is straight black hair shows that it was due to your wife’s pulling the hair of her neighbor.” This is a case due to unusual anger.
Marked by disgust.—After giving a special lecture to ladies in the city of T——, Kan., an elderly lady, in company with a friend, sought an interview with me. She told me the following sad personal experience: “One summer, husband persuaded me to go with him and the children to our county fair. Being quite nervous and easily fatigued, I requested that I be permitted to spend the time in the carriage while he and the children enjoyed the fair. I had been sitting in the carriage but a short time when I noticed a crowd gathering around some object of attraction and I decided to go and see what it was. On a table stood a four-year-old boy wearing the false head of an old man. There was nothing grotesque or unnatural about the head. But the contrast produced in me a feeling of disgust. The thought was suggested to me, some one might be frightened at that boy and mark her child, but I will not, for I am disgusted. I wondered that others did not feel disgusted as I did. On returning to my carriage the feeling of disgust and the mental picture of the child remained with me. When husband and children came I related to them what I had seen. For weeks after this event the mental picture of the child with the head of an old man would appear in the stream of consciousness accompanied with a feeling of disgust. After two days of parturition, a seven-month child was removed from my body by an operation. Its head was abnormally large and had the appearance of an old man.” Here was a case due to disgust.
Marked by sympathy.—Ten days ago I was entertained by a family having a very nervous temperament. The son-in-law sat in a rocking chair on the front veranda holding his three-year-old child in his arms. The child was helpless, emaciated and in breathing made a wheezing noise. This condition had obtained since her birth. During the period of gestation, a sickly, poor, wheezing, half-grown hog was kept in the yard and cared for by the nervous mother of the child. The condition of the hog constantly enlisted the sympathy of the mother. This was the history of the case as told me by the child’s father. This birthmark was caused by unusual sympathy.
An amusing case.—In most cases abnormal maternal impressions do not result in serious injuries to children.
While lecturing at M——, Ky., I was told by a mother how she had marked one of her children. She had listened, a few days before, to some lady callers explaining the cause of a woman’s giving birth to twins. These uninformed women claimed that if a prospective mother should find and become interested in a number of twin objects in nature, such as eggs with double yolks, twin apples, peaches, ears of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, etc., that she would most certainly be the mother of twins. A few days after this conversation she was gathering cucumbers. The vines were wet and the ground soaked by frequent showers. For this reason she was barefooted. She stooped over to remove from between two toes a small object that had lodged between them. The object proved to be a most perfect small twin cucumber. The mother recalled the conversation of her friends, and this experience came up in her mind so often that she would not have been surprised at twins. The child born later had the most perfect twin toes.
A sad case.—While delivering a lecture on heredity in a leading Western college my attention was called to a very intelligent face in the audience. It was a young lady who appeared to have no hands or arms. Later I observed tiny undeveloped hands largely concealed by very short sleeves. At the close of the address I asked the president about her. He informed me that she was unusually bright and that her affliction was from birth. He arranged for me to have an interview with her. I found that she had two and three fingers to the hand and that her hands and arms had not grown since birth. In every other particular she was a most attractive and perfect figure. Her mother’s explanation was that before her birth she was one day holding her brother, then a baby, in her lap while operating the sewing machine. The little fellow put his hand where the needle was forced through his finger. The mother fainted. The mental picture in the mother’s mind was that some of the baby’s fingers were cut off. The mental impression lingered in the mother’s mind. The young lady’s arms were about six inches long. On one hand there were two fingers, on the other there were three fingers. Her arms and hands had not grown any since birth. Otherwise she was normally developed.
Marked her child twice.—About the close of a lecture in one of the Central Western states, a lady asked me to call at the Cash Store, explaining that she wanted an hour’s interview with me. I found her to be a lady of extremely susceptible temperament, refined and cultured, but a bundle of nerves. She was the mother of three little nervous children. Before calling in her oldest child, which she had marked twice, she explained her experience. She said, “In our early marriage we owned a cow that we were very proud of. Husband and I had often wished that she were dehorned. One morning my husband’s brother secretly dehorned her. The servant boy finding it out ran to the house and urged me to go out to the barn and see what had occurred. When I rushed suddenly upon the scene, I seized the fingers of the right hand with the left and screamed. There were several large clear blisters on the cow’s head. When my little girl was born the index finger of the right hand was off at the second joint, the other three fingers were entirely absent and several blisters had to be removed by the physician.
“During the second or third month of gestation I was told that one of the neighbors had given birth to a child with one foot turned entirely around. My curiosity led me to go over and see the child. When our girl was born her left foot was turned completely around, the toes pointing backwards. We have spent sixteen hundred dollars trying to have the foot turned back. We have succeeded only in a small measure.” Then she said, “I never heard of birthmarks until after my child was born. If I could have heard your series of lectures, it would have been worth a fortune to me. I believe this misfortune could and would have been avoided.”
The reader must not conclude that these pathetic cases are common. They are not. The cases cited here represent fully one-half of the extreme cases that I have personally studied during years of travel and lecturing. They forcefully illustrate the possibilities of maternal impressions on the forming child.