dical and adequate explanation of the
phenomenon generally. If it is a matter of auto-suggestion due to a
tradition, then we should expect to find longings most frequent and most
pronounced in multiparous women, who are best acquainted with the
tradition and best able to experience all that is expected of a pregnant
woman. But, as a matter of fact, the women who have borne most children
are precisely those who are least likely to be affected by the longings
which tradition demands they should manifest. Giles has shown that
longings occur much more frequently in the first than in any subsequent
pregnancy; there is a regular decrease with the increase in number of
pregnancies until in women with ten or more children the longings scarcely
occur at all.

We must probably regard longings as based on a physiological and psychic
tendency which is of universal extension and almost or quite normal. They
are known throughout Europe and were known to the medical writers of
antiquity. Old Indian as well as old Jewish physicians recognized them.
They have been noted among many savage races to-day: among the Indians of
North and South America, among the peoples of the Nile and the Soudan, in
the Malay archipelago.[185] In Europe they are most common among the
women of the people, living simple and natural lives.[186]

The true normal relationship of the longings of pregnancy is with the
impulsive and often irresistible longings for food delicacies which are
apt to overcome children, and in girls often persist or revive through
adolescence and even beyond. Such sudden fits of greediness belong to
those kind of normal psychic manifestations which are on the verge of the
abnormal into which they occasionally pass. They may occur, however, in
healthy, well-bred, and well-behaved children who, under the stress of the
sudden craving, will, without compunction and apparently without
reflection, steal the food they long for or even steal from their parents
the money to buy it. The food thus seized by a well-nigh irresistible
craving is nearly always a fruit. Fruit is usually doled out to children
in small quantities as a luxury, but we are descended from primitive human
peoples and still more remote ape-like ancestors, by whom fruit was in its
season eaten copiously, and it is not surprising that when that season
comes round the child, more sensitive than the adult to primitive
influences, should sometimes experience the impulse of its ances