nfish
alive, placing them in a pail of water in the porch. She stumbled
against the pail and the shock caused the fish to flap over the
pail and come in violent contact with her leg. The cold wriggling
fish produced a nervous shock, but she attached no importance to
this. The child (a girl) had at birth a mark of bronze pigment
resembling a fish with the head uppermost (photograph given) on
the corresponding part of the same leg. Daughter's health good;
throughout life she has had a strong craving for sunfish, which
she has sometimes eaten till she has vomited from repletion.
(C.F. Gardiner, Colorado Springs, _American Journal Obstetrics_,
February, 1898.)

The next case occurred in a bitch. A thoroughbred fox terrier
bitch strayed and was discovered a day or two later with her
right foreleg broken. The limb was set under chloroform with the
help of Roentgen rays, and the dog made a good recovery. Several
weeks later she gave birth to a puppy with a right foreleg that
was ill-developed and minus the paw. (J. Booth, Cork, _British
Medical Journal_, September 16, 1899.)

Four months before the birth of her child a woman with four
healthy children and no history of deformity in the family fell
and cut her left wrist severely against a broken bowl; she had a
great fright and shock. Her child, otherwise perfect, was born
without left hand and wrist, the stump of arm terminating at
lower end of radius and ulna. (G. Ainslie Johnston, Ambleside,
_British Medical Journal_, April 18, 1903.)

The belief in the reality of the transference of strong mental or physical
impressions on the mother into physical changes in the child she is
bearing is very ancient and widespread. Most writers on the subject begin
with the book of Genesis and the astute device of Jacob in influencing the
color of his lambs by mental impressions on his ewes. But the belief
exists among even more primitive people than the early Hebrews, and in all
parts of the world.[189] Among the Greeks there is a trace of the belief
in Hippocrates, the first of the world's great physicians, while Soranus,
the most famous of ancient gynaecologists, states the matter in the most
precise manner, with instances in proof. The belief continued to persist
unquestioned throughout the Middle Ages. The first author who denied the
influence of maternal impressions altogether appear