In the preceding chapter we learned that when the two germ cells came together, there occurred a complete blending of two separate and distinct hereditary lines, reaching from the present away back into the dim and distant past. By the union of these two ancestral strains a new personality is formed, a new individual is created, with its own peculiar characteristics.

HEREDITARY TRAITS

Probably none of the laboriously acquired accomplishments of the present generation can be directly—and as such—handed down to our children. What we are to be and what we will do in this world was largely determined by the laws of heredity by the time we were well started on our development experience en-utero during the third or fourth week of our prenatal existence, as outlined in a former chapter.

It is now generally accepted in scientific circles that acquired characteristics are not transmissible. Someone has aptly stated this truth by saying that "wooden heads are inherited, but wooden legs are not." This does not by any means imply that we do not have power and ability to fashion our careers and carve out our own destiny, within the possible bounds of our hereditary endowment and environmental surroundings. Heredity does determine our "capital stock," but our own efforts and acts determine the interest and increase which we may derive from our natural endowment. From the moment conception takes place—the very instant when the two sex cells meet and blend—then and there "the gates of heredity are forever closed." From that time on we are dealing with the problems of nutrition, development, education, and environment; therefore, so-called prenatal influence can have nothing whatever to do with heredity.

A father may have acquired great talent as a physician or a surgeon, in fact he may hold the chair of surgery in a medical college, but each of his children come into the world without the slightest knowledge of the subject, and, as far as direct and immediate heredity is concerned, will have to work just about as hard to master the subject as will the same average class of children whose parents were not surgeons. This must not be taken to mean that certain abilities and tendencies are not inheritable—for they are; but they are inherited through the parents—and not from them—directly. These transmitted characteristics are largely "stock" traits, and usually have long been present in the "ancestral strain."

MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS

A mother may sing and pray all through the nine months of expectancy, or she may weep and scold, or even curse. In neither case can she influence the spiritual or moral tendencies of her child and cause it, through supposed prenatal influence, to be born with criminal tendencies or to grow up a pious lad or become a devout minister. These tendencies and characteristics are all largely determined by the "depressors," "suppressors," and "determiners" which were present in the two microscopic and mosaic germ cells which united to start the embryo at the time of conception.

The child is destined to be born, endowed, and equipped with the mental, nervous, and physical powers which his line has fallen heir to all through the past ages. Down through the ages education, religion, environment, and other special influences have no doubt played a small part in influencing and determining hereditary characteristics; just as environment in the ages past changed the foot of the evolving horse from a flat, "cushiony" foot with many toes (much needed in the soft bog of his earlier existence) into the "hoof foot" of later days, when harder soil and necessity for greater fleetness, assisted by some sort of "selection" and "survival," conspired to give us the foot of our modern horse, and this story is all plainly and serially told in the fossil and other remains found in our own hemisphere. It would appear that many, many generations of education and environment are required to influence markedly the established and settled train of heredity regarding any particular element or characteristic in any particular line or lines of hereditary tendencies.

EUGENIC SUPERSTITION

There is probably more misinformation in the minds of the people on the subject of "maternal impressions" and "birthmarks" than any other scientific or medical subject. The popular belief that, if a pregnant woman should see an ugly sight or pass through some terrifying experience, in some mysterious way her unborn child would be "marked," deformed, or in some way show some blemish at birth, is a time-honored and ancient belief.

Such unscientific and unwarranted teaching has been handed down from mother to daughter through the ages, while the poor, misguided souls of expectant women have suffered untold remorse, heaped blame upon themselves, lived lives literally cursed with fear and dread—veritable slaves to superstition and bondage—all because of the simple fact that a certain percentage of all children born in this world have sustained some sort of an injury or "embryological accident" during the first days of fetal existence. For instance, take the common birthmark of a patch of reddened skin on the face, brow, or neck. As soon as the baby is born, the worried mother asks in anxious tones: "Doctor, is it all right, is it perfect, has it got any birthmarks?" On being told that the baby has a round, red patch on its left brow, the ever-ready statement of the mother comes forth: "Yes, I knew I'd mark it, I was picking berries one day about three months ago, and I ate and ate, until I suddenly remembered I might mark my baby, and before I knew what I was doing, I touched my brow and I just knew I had marked my baby." Do you know, reader, that that birthmark was present fully four months before she passed through that experience in the berry patch? And yet so worried and apprehensive has been the pregnant mother, that, although she can never successfully predict the "birthmarks" and blemishes of her child, nevertheless when these defects are disclosed at birth she is unfailingly able immediately to recall some extraordinary experience which she has carefully stored away in her memory and which, to her mind, most fully explains and accounts for the defect.

Is it much wonder that in the very early days of embryonic existence, during the hours of delicate cell division, indentation, outpushing, elongation, and sliding of young cells—is it much wonder, I repeat—that there occur a few malformations, blemishes, or other accidents which persist as "birthmarks?"

CAUSES OF BIRTHMARKS

There are many factors which may enter into the production of birth-blemishes, deformities, monstrosities, etc. These influences are all governed by certain definite laws of cause and effect. A pre-existent systemic disease in the father, or a coexistent disorder in the mother, may be a leading factor. A mechanical injury, such as a sudden fall, a blow, or a kick, or certain kinds of prolonged pressure, not to mention restrictions and contractions of the maternal bony structures, may all possibly contribute something to these prenatal miscarriages of growth and development. Maternal or prenatal embryonic infections could bring about many sorts of birthmarks and malformations. These defects might also be caused by certain types of severe inflammatory disorders in the uterus during the early days of pregnancy.

The same factors that produce the accidents of embryology resulting in malformations or monstrosities in the human family, are also operative in the case of our lesser brethren of the animal kingdom, for monstrosities and birth-defects are very common among the lower animals, notwithstanding the fact that the animal mother probably does not "believe in birthmarks."

"It is a striking fact that during the nineteenth century, the teratologists, those who have scientifically investigated the causes of monstrosities and fetal morbid states, have almost without exception, rejected the theory of maternal impressions." Scientists and physicians are coming to recognize the fact that fears and frights do not in any way act as causes in the production of monstrosities and deformities. Let us seek forever to liberate all womankind from the common and harassing fear and the definite dread and worry that, because they failed to control themselves at the instant of some terrifying sight or experience, they were directly responsible for the misfortune of their abnormal offspring.

It should be remembered that there exists no direct connection whatsoever between the nervous system of the unborn child and the nervous system of the mother. The only physiological or embryological relationship is of a nutritional order, and even that is indirect and remote.

ROLE OF THE PLACENTA

By the end of the third month, the "cocoon" attachment described in chapter two has disappeared; the fetus is slowly pushed away from the uterus which has so snugly held it for more than eleven weeks; while upon the exact site of its previous attachment the thickened uterine membrane undergoes a very interesting and important change—definite blood vessels begin to form—which begin indirectly to form contact with the maternal vessels, and thus it is that the placenta, or "after birth" is formed; and then, by means of the umbilical cord, nourishment from the mother's blood-stream is carried to the growing and rapidly developing child. In exchange for the nourishing stream of life-giving fluid by which growth and development take place, the embryo gives off its poisonous excretions which are carried back to the placenta, from which they are absorbed into the veinous circulation of the mother; so, while the mother does, through the process of nutrition, influence growth and development in the embryo, she is wholly unable to produce specific changes and such definite developmental errors as birthmarks and other deformities.

Just as truly as it would be impossible so to frighten a setting hen as to "mark" or otherwise influence the form or character of the chicks which would ultimately come forth from the eggs in her nest, it is just as truly impossible to frighten the pregnant mother and thereby influence the final developmental product of the human egg which is so securely tucked away in its uterine nest; for, when conception has occurred, the human embryo is just as truly an egg—fashioned and formed—as is the larger and shell-contained embryo of the chick which lies in the nest of the setting hen.

And so we are compelled to recognize the fact that there is little more danger to the unborn child when the mother is frightened than when the father is scared. The one contributes as much as the other to the general character of the child, while neither is to blame for development errors and defects.

SUGGESTION AND HEREDITY

Certain fears are suggested to children. For twenty years I lived under the delusion that I was terribly afraid of snakes—more so than any other human being; for I was told when a mere child that I had been "marked with the fear of snakes," that just two months before I saw the peep of day, my esteemed mother had been terrified by a snake. Everywhere I went, I announced to sympathizing and ofttimes mischievous friends, that "I was marked with the fear of snakes and must never be frightened with them." It is needless to add in passing, that I was teased and frightened all through my girlhood days. I was a veritable slave to the bondage of snake-fear. Everywhere I went I looked for my dreaded foe, expecting to sit on one, step on one, or to have one drop into my lap from the roof.

The day of deliverance came after marriage, when in a supreme effort to deliver me from the shackles of fear, the goodman of the house tenderly, but firmly, maneuvered a morning walk so that it halted in front of a large plate-glass window of the Snake Drug Store in San Francisco. Just back of this plate glass, and within eighteen inches of my very nose, were fifty-seven varieties of the reptiles, big and small, streaked and checkered, quiet and active. After much remonstrance and waiting, I came-to—gazed at the markings, beautiful in their exactness—while slowly the change of mind took place. Faith took the place of fear, calmness subdued panic, and I was wondrously delivered from the veritable bondage of a score of years. And so it is that the mother suffers and then the child suffers, ofttimes a living death, because of the superstition "I'm marked," while there is ever present the fear or dread that "something is going to happen, because I'm different from all other individuals—because 'I'm marked!'"