Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume V Part 17

Iron appears to be liberated in the maternal organism during pregnancy, and Wychgel has shown (Zeitschrift fur Geburtshulfe und Gynakologie, bd. xlvii, Heft II) that the pigment of pregnant women contains iron, and that the amount of iron in the urine is increased.

[173]

Vinay, Maladies de la Grossesse, Chapter VIII; K. Hennig, "Exploratio Externa," Comptes-rendus du XIIe. Congres International de Medecine, vol. vi, Section XIII, pp. 144-166. A bibliography of the literature concerning the physiology of pregnancy, extending to ten pages, is appended by Pinard to his article "Grossesse," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales.

[174]

Stratz, op. cit., Chapter XII.

[175]

W. S. A. Griffith, "The Diagnosis of Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, April 11, 1903.

[176]

J. Mackenzie and H. O. Nicholson, "The Heart in Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, October 8, 1904; Stengel and Stanton, "The Condition of the Heart in Pregnancy," Medical Record, May 10, 1902 and University Pennsylvania Medical Bulletin, Sept., 1904 (summarized in British Medical Journal, August 16, 1902, and Sept. 23, 1905.)

[177]

J. Henderson, "Maternal Blood at Term," Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, February, 1902; C. Douglas, "The Blood in Pregnant Women," British Medical Journal, March 26, 1904; W. L. Thompson, "The Blood in Pregnancy," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, June, 1904.

[178]

H. O. Nicholson, "Some Remarks on the Maternal Circulation in Pregnancy," British Medical Journal, October 3, 1903.

[179]

J. Morris Slemans, "Metabolism During Pregnancy," Johns Hopkins Hospital Reports, vol. xii, 1904.

[180]

B. Wolff, Zentralblatt fur Gynakologie, 1904, No. 26.

[181]

Tridandani, Annali di Ostetrica, March, 1900.

[182]

R. Barnes, "The Induction of Labor," British Medical Journal, December 22, 1894.

[183]

See, e.g., Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, pp. 344, et seq.

[184]

Arthur Giles, "The Longings of Pregnant Women," Transactions Obstetrical Society of London, vol. x.x.xv, 1893.

[185]

Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, Chapter x.x.x.

[186]

Thus, in Cornwall, "to be in the longing way" is a popular synonym for pregnancy.

[187]

The apple, wherever it is known, has nearly always been a sacred or magic fruit (as J. F. Campbell shows, Popular Tales of West Highlands, vol. I, p. lxxv. et seq.), and the fruit of the forbidden tree which tempted Eve is always popularly imagined to be an apple. One may perhaps refer in this connection to the fact that at Rome and elsewhere the t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es have been called apples. I may add that we find a curious proof of the recognition of the feminine love of apples in an old Portuguese ballad, "Donna Guimar," in which a damsel puts on armour and goes to the wars; her s.e.x is suspected and as a test, she is taken into an orchard, but Donna Guimar is too wary to fall into the trap, and turning away from the apples plucks a citron.

[188]

A. Pinard, Art. "Grossesse," Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences Medicales, p. 138. On the subject of violent, criminal and abnormal impulses during pregnancy, see c.u.mston, "Pregnancy and Crime," American Journal Obstetrics, December, 1903.

[189]

See especially Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, vol. i, Chapter x.x.xI. Ballantyne in his work on the pathology of the ftus adds Loango negroes, the Eskimo and the ancient j.a.panese.

[190]

In 1731 Schurig, in his Syllepsilogia, devoted more than a hundred pages (cap. IX) to summarizing a vast number of curious cases of maternal impressions leading to birth-marks of all kinds.

[191]

J. W. Ballantyne has written an excellent history of the doctrine of maternal impressions, reprinted in his Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo, 1904, Chapter IX; he gives a bibliography of 381 items. In Germany the history of the question has been written by Dr. Iwan Bloch (under the pseudonym of Gerhard von Welsenburg), Das Versehen der Frauen, 1899. Cf., in French, G. Variot, "Origine des Prejuges Populaires sur les Envies," Bulletin Societe d'Anthropologie, Paris, June 18, 1891. Variot rejects the doctrine absolutely, Bloch accepts it, Ballantyne speaks cautiously.

[192]

J. G. Kiernan has shown how many of the alleged cases are negatived by the failure to take this fact into consideration. (Journal of American Medical a.s.sociation, December 9, 1899.)

[193]

J. Clifton Edgar, The Practice of Obstetrics, second edition, 1904, p. 296. In an important discussion of the question at the American Gynaecological Society in 1886, introduced by Fordyce Barker, various eminent gynaecologists declared in favor of the doctrine, more or less cautiously. (Transactions of the American Gynaecological Society, vol. xi, 1886, pp. 152-196.) Gould and Pyle, bringing forward some of the data on the question (Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, pp. 81, et seq.) state that the reality of the influence of maternal impressions seems fully established. On the other side, see G. W. Cook, American Journal of Obstetrics, September, 1889, and H. F. Lewis, ib., July, 1899.

[194]

Transactions Edinburgh Obstetrical Society, vol. xvii, 1892.

[195]

J. W. Ballantyne, Manual of Antenatal Pathology: The Embryo, p. 45.

[196]

W. C. Dabney, "Maternal Impressions," Keating's Cyclopaedia of Diseases of Children, vol. i, 1889, pp. 191-216.

[197]

Fere, Sensation et Mouvement, Chapter XIV, "Sur la Psychologie du Ftus."

[198]

J. Thomson, "Defective Co-ordination in Utero," British Medical Journal, September 6, 1902.

[199]

H. Campbell, Nervous Organization of Man and Woman, p. 206; cf. Moll, Untersuchungen uber die Libido s.e.xualis, bd. i, p. 264. Many authorities, from Sora.n.u.s of Ephesus onward, consider, however, that s.e.xual relations should cease during pregnancy, and certainly during the later months. Cf. Brenot, De l'influence de la copulation pendant la grosseisse, 1903.

[200]

Bianchi terms this fairly common condition the neurasthenia of pregnancy.

[201]

Vinay, Traite des Maladies de la Grossesse, 1894, pp. 51, 577; Mongeri, "Nervenkrankungen und Schw.a.n.gerschaft." Allegemeine Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie, bd. LVIII, Heft 5. Haig remarks (Uric Acid, sixth edition, p. 151) that during normal pregnancy diseases with excess of uric acid in the blood (headaches, fits, mental depression, dyspepsia, asthma) are absent, and considers that the common idea that women do not easily take colds, fevers, etc., at this time is well founded.

[202]

Founding his remarks on certain anatomical changes and on a suggestion of Engel's, Donaldson observes: "It is impossible to escape the conclusion that in women natural education is complete only with maternity, which we know to effect some slight changes in the sympathetic system and possibly the spinal cord, and which may be fairly laid under suspicion of causing more structural modifications than are at present recognized." H. H. Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain, p. 352.

[203]

The state of menstruation is in many respects an approximation to that of pregnancy; see, e.g., Edgar's Practice of Obstetrics, plates 6 6 and 7, showing the resemblance of the menstrual changes in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the external s.e.xual parts to the changes of pregnancy; cf. Havelock Ellis, Man and Woman, fourth edition, Chapter XI, "The Functional Periodicity of Woman."

[204]

Thus the gypsies say of an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant, "She has smelt the moon-flower"-a flower believed to grow on the so-called moon-mountain and to possess the property of impregnating by its smell. Ploss and Bartels, Das Weib, bd. I, Chapter XXVII.

[205]

This was a sound instinct, for it is now recognized as an extremely important part of puericulture that a woman should rest at all events during the latter part of pregnancy; see, e.g., Pinard, Gazette des Hopitaux, November 28, 1895, and Annales de Gynecologie, August, 1898.