unpleasant sights. For this belief there is no foundation; the cases
often cited in its support may be fully explained on the grounds of
coincidence.

With the possible exception of such individuals as are spending their
lives in solitary confinement, there is scarcely a human being who
has not in the course of nine consecutive months some untoward
physical or mental experience which engraves itself upon the memory.
Prospective mothers are not apt to be exempt from a rule so general
in its application, but if by good chance one happens so to be she
will hardly fail to hear of the misfortune of others, which,
according to the doctrine of maternal impressions, may be equally
effective in interfering with the proper development of the child. We
should then rightly expect most, if not all, babies to be "marked"--
clearly a situation which does not prevail.

In order to learn how frequently prospective mothers may have
disagreeable experiences which they fear will affect the formation of
the child, I have lately asked the patients whom I have attended,
"Was there any incident during your pregnancy to which you could have
attributed the infant's condition, had it been marked?" The babies of
all those to whom the question was submitted were normal; yet without
exception those whose pregnancies just completed were their first
answered in the affirmative. It is also pertinent that one of these
patients had lost her brother by a violent and accidental death when
she was four months pregnant; a similar bereavement was suffered by
another at the eighth month; each was, however, delivered of a
perfectly healthy child. Among those with whom the recently ended
pregnancy was not the first I found some who could remember incidents
popularly believed to have an influence over the development of the