When the child appeared, his skin was
found to be normally white--except between the fingers and toes, where
it was black. His mother had failed to wash herself thoroughly in those
places!
Of course, few of the cases now credited are as gross as this, but the
principle involved remains the same.
We will take a hypothetical case of a common sort for the sake of
clearness: the mother receives a wound on the arm; when her child is
born it is found to have a scar of some sort at about the same place on
the corresponding arm. Few mothers would fail to see the result of a
maternal impression here. But how could this mark have been transmitted?
This is not a question of the transmission of acquired characters
through the germ-plasm, or anything of that sort, for the child was
already formed when the mother was injured. One is obliged, therefore,
to believe that the injury was in some way transmitted through the
placenta, the only connection between the mother and the unborn child;
and that it was then reproduced in some way in the child.
Here is a situation which, examined in the cold light of reason, puts a
heavy enough strain on the credulity. Such an influence can reach the
embryo only through the blood of the mother.
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