Essays upon heredity and kindred biological problems / by August Weismann ; authorized translation edited by Edward B. Poulton, Selmar Schönland and Arthur E. Shipley.

  • Weismann, August, 1834-1914.
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays upon heredity and kindred biological problems / by August Weismann ; authorized translation edited by Edward B. Poulton, Selmar Schönland and Arthur E. Shipley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    wife received a shock during her first pregnancy upon seeing a child with a hare-lip, and she was constantly haunted with the idea that her child might have the same malformation. She was delivered of a child with a typical hare-lip: her next child had an upper lip with a less-marked cleft; while the third possessed a red mark instead of a cleft.' Now what can be said about such ' proofs' ? We may probably rightly conjecture that Burdach, who was in other respects a clever physiologist, was in this subject somewhat credulous: but there are also instances about which there is not the slightest doubt. I may remind the reader of a ease which has been told by no other than the celebrated embryologist, Carl Ernst von Baer ^. 'A lady was very much upset by a fire, which was visible at a distance, because she believed that it was in her native place. As the latter was seven German miles distant, the impression had lasted a long time before it was possible to receive any certain intelligence, and this long delay afiected the mind of the lady so greatly, that for some time afterwards she said that she constantly saw the flames before her eyes. Two or three months afterwards she was delivered of a daughter who had a red patch on the forehead in the form of a flame. This patch did not disappear until the child was seven years old.' Von Baer added, ' I mention this case because I am well acquainted with it, for the lady was my own sister, and because she complained of seeing flames before her eyes before the birth of the child, and did not invent it afterwards as the cause of the strange appearance.' Here then we have a case which is absolutely certain. Von Baer's name is a guarantee for absolute accuracy. Why then has science, in spite of this, rejected the whole idea of the efficacy of ' maternal impressions' ever since the appearance of the ti'eatises by Bergmann and Leuckart ^ ? Science has rejected this idea for many and conclusive reasons, all of which I am not going to repeat here. In the first place, because our maturer knowledge of the physiology of the body shows that such a causal connexion between the peculiar characters of the child and, if I may say so, the corresponding psychical im- 1 See Burdach, 'Lehrbuch der Physiologie,' Bd. II, 1835-40, p. 128. ' See Handwörterbuch der Physiologie von Eud. Wagner, Artikel ' Zeugung,' von Rud. Leuckart.