ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

ART. I.-On the Influence of the Maternal Mind over the Offspring during Pregnancy and Lactation. By WILLIAM A. HAMMOND, M. D., Professor of Diseases of the Mind and Nervous System in the Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York.

THAT the mind exercises a certain influence over organs of the body not immediately under the control of the will, is a very well-recognized fact. An emotional disturbance of one kind accelerates the action of the heart; of another, causes a blush to appear upon the face; of another, impedes the movements of res piration. Fear or anxiety may cause such an exhalation of serum into the intestinal canal as to give rise to diarrhoea; intense expectation will often, especially in children, produce a desire to urinate, and the effort

to control a manifestation of feeling, or to prevent the expression of grief, causes a painful spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat. These are a few familiar examples of a power which not many years ago was looked upon as mysterious, but which is now partially explained by the knowledge we have acquired relative to the functions of the ganglionic or sympathetic system of nerves..

But commonplace as are the instances we have cited and the intelligent reader will readily recall many more of a similar character-no person, with even a slight knowledge of the structure of the human body, can reflect upon them without experiencing a feeling somewhat akin to awe, and asking himself questions which even the most profound students of physiological and psychological science would find it impossible to answer. Why should our faces become red with anger and grow pale with fear? Why should a maiden blush with shame and a coward tremble with apprehension? We do not know. We have not even the most remote conception of what the relation is between the cause and the effect in these and other analogous cases in point which might be adduced. We simply know that they are facts, and that they are produced through the medium of the important nervous apparatus to which allusion. has been made.

The direct influence of the imagination, or strong mental emotion, in causing or curing disease, or producing actual changes in organic structure, is likewise generally admitted. Disease of the heart, for instance,

may originate through a firmly-rooted, though erro neous, idea that this organ is in an abnormal condition. Warts often disappear if the affected individual, with full faith, goes through some nonsensical form of incantation, and paralysis of long standing has suddenly vanished when an imperative necessity has required the patient to use the affected members.

But there are much more significant sympathetic manifestations which have not been so generally accepted as those above cited, though certainly not more difficult of proof, nor less capable of being understood; and these relate (1st) to the influence exerted by the mind of the mother over her unborn offspring, and (2d) to the alterations which emotional disturbance so frequently induces in the composition of her milk. These two classes of phenomena I purpose considering in the present memoir.

From a very early period the belief has been entertained that the mental impressions made upon the mother were in some way propagated to the unborn offspring. The writer of Genesis was evidently acquainted with this idea, for in detailing the manner in which Jacob obtained particular sheep and goats, he says:

"And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chestnut tree, and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the wateringtroughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink. And the

flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ring-straked, speckled, and spotted."

Here the impressions conveyed to the brain through the sense of vision are distinctly asserted to have influenced the system of the ewes to such an extent that they brought forth young marked as were the rods which Jacob placed before their eyes. The action of such a cause must therefore have been a well-known fact in natural history, for it is not asserted that there was any miraculous interposition in the case. The account is given with the utmost simplicity, as if it were an every-day event.

Hippocrates was also acquainted with this vital. property inherent in the maternal organism, for he

says:

"If pregnant women conceive a fancy for eating earth or charcoal, and really do eat either of these substances, the infant will be born with the representation thereof impressed upon the head."

This is, of course, a generalization from insufficient data-a common failing of the older writers, and one not yet altogether avoided. Doubtless, however, Hippocrates had witnessed one or more facts which served him as a basis for his statement.

Terelius, who vigorously urged the doctrine that the fœtus was affected by physical and mental impressions made upon the mother, quotes Hippocrates as asserting in his Пepi yévɛois (De Genitura) that when

1 Genesis. Chap. xxx., v. 37, 38, 39.

2 Περὶ ἐπικύησι (De Superfœtatione).

3 De Generatione et Partu Hominis, libri duo. Lugdini. 1857. chap. 13.

a pregnant woman has a disease or a pain in any part of her body, the foetus will be born with a mark upon the corresponding part of its body. I have been unable, however, to find that Hippocrates ever made such a statement.

Demangeon, who denies that the foetus in utero can be in any way influenced through the mind of the mother, quotes Malebranche (Récherche de la verité) as follows:

"An infant in the womb of its mother is connected with her in the most intimate manner which it is possible to imagine, and although the soul may be separated from that of the mother, the body is not detached from hers. It is reasonable, therefore, for us to believe that the feelings, the passions, in a word, all the thoughts which she experiences from sensations in her body are likewise felt by the fœtus. For if one reflects that a mother being frightened by a cat will give birth to a child who will be horrified every time that it sees this animal, it is easy to conclude that the child saw, with horror and emotion before its birth, the image which had terrified the mother. There are many other examples of the force of the maternal imagination given by authors; for not only does it produce deformities in the infants, but causes the formation upon them of fruits, such as apples, pears, grapes, and others, which the mothers may have longed for. If the mother strongly wishes for such things the foetus wishes for them also."

1 L'Imagination considerée dans ses effets directs sur l'Homme et les Animaux, etc. Paris. 1829. p. 325.