. The cyclopædia of anatomy and physiology. Anatomy; Physiology; Zoology. TERATOLOGY. 943 reasoning, for the theory of the mental im- pressions, which was so readily adopted in the barbarous middle ages, as a mode of saving poor and innocent women from torture and stake, finds even in the present clay more ad- vocates than might have been expected. Of this I was convinced at the Congress of Naturalists at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1847, and in the Report of the Transactions of the Sc/i wci- zerischcn Ndlurf. Gesdlschaft zu Chin; 29, 30, 31 Juli, 1844, in which the affected mind of the pregnant woman
. The cyclopædia of anatomy and physiology. Anatomy; Physiology; Zoology. TERATOLOGY. 943 reasoning, for the theory of the mental im- pressions, which was so readily adopted in the barbarous middle ages, as a mode of saving poor and innocent women from torture and stake, finds even in the present clay more ad- vocates than might have been expected. Of this I was convinced at the Congress of Naturalists at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1847, and in the Report of the Transactions of the Sc/i wci- zerischcn Ndlurf. Gesdlschaft zu Chin; 29, 30, 31 Juli, 1844, in which the affected mind of the pregnant woman is said to produce a mysterious effect on the fetus, and that the medium by which this influence is com- municated may be the hearing as well as the sight! To crown all these absurdities, we see mentioned in Rust, Alugasin, B. xxi. S. 261., that a woman gave birth to a child with im- perfect bones, which is attributed to her having been present, before her pregnancy, at the execution of a criminal by breaking on the wheel. To all these fantastical considera- tions I oppose the following arguments : — a. That malformations seldom, or perhaps never, agree with apprehensions or fears a priori of pregnant women (G. Vrolik, T. Zimmer, J. J. Plenck, and Burdach). On the contrary, it often happens that a woman who has once procreated a malformation, and is continually troubled by the fear of another similar sad occurrence, may become the happy mother of a second well-formed child. b. That the fetus, even when a germ, is quite independent; transferred from the ovary into the uterus, it needs for its developement a material intercourse with the maternal body, but no organic connection ; for which reason it can be formed as well without as within the uterus, as in extra-uterine pregnancy ; that it stands in no connection, either vascular or nervous, with the body of the mother, and that therefore it is improbable that her mental condition can have any influence whatever upon the form
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