perfectly healthy,
perfectly normal, and is now a splendid specimen of manhood. I know
children whose mothers went through severe attacks of pneumonia,
typhoid fever, etc., and still they were born perfectly healthy and
perfectly normal. I know children whose mothers were using every means
to abort them, took all kinds of internal medicines until they were
deathly sick, and still they were born perfectly healthy and normal. I
know children whose mothers tried to abort them by mechanical means,
who went to abortionists who made one or more attempts to induce the
abortion--I know even cases where the mothers bled as a result of such
attempts--and nevertheless, the children were born perfectly healthy,
developed normally physically and mentally.

Of course these are not things that I would advise women to do or to
undergo. I would not advise pregnant women to worry, to be sick, to
take poisonous medicines or to make attempts at abortion, but I merely
bring up these points to emphasize to my readers not to take the
necessity of prenatal care in too absolute a sense, and not to worry
themselves unnecessarily if the conditions during their pregnancy are
not all that could be desired. The child is not necessarily going to
be affected. The condition of the germ-plasms, i.e., the condition of
the ovum and the spermatozoa at the time of conception is more
important than all subsequent care during gestation.

As there are foolish people who possess a peculiar knack of
misinterpreting and misunderstanding everything, I wish to emphasize
that hygiene during pregnancy should not be neglected. Everything
possible should be done to put the mother in the best possible
physical and mental condition. All I want to say is that it is bad to
be insane on the subject, that it is bad to take things in an absolute
sense, and that it is bad to exaggerate.

You will often hear it said that a child that was conceived when the
father was in an exhilarated condition is apt to be epileptic, or
nervous, or insane, and what not. This is also to be taken with a
grain of salt. A chronic alcoholic has a defective germ-plasm, and his
children are apt to be defective. But a glass of wine at a wedding
banquet cannot affect the previously formed spermatozoa. And the
statements about children being born defective or developing
defectively because their fathers took an occasional glass of wine are
unworthy of serious consideration; are unworthy of any consid