relatives on either side of family. On February 22, 1900, they lost by fire a large barn with contents, feed, machinery, and several very fine hogs, the mother at the time four months pregnant assisted in the efforts to extinguish the fire, and afterwards carried buckets of water and poured on the hogs, one of which had the legs burned from the body, leaving charred stumps. Aside from the excitement and shock at the time, she seemed to suffer no inconvenience, and continued well until the completion of the period of pregnancy. On July 15th, after a difficult labor, the child was born as the picture shows. The mother was very sick and confined to bed for five weeks, and says she "passed with and following the placenta many peculiar pieces of flesh, which were not like the after-birth." If we accept the theory of maternal impressions as accounting for this child's condition, we must concede that there was not “an arrest of development," but an actual destruction or prenatal intrauterine amputation of the upper extremities by some mysterious vis naturalis as well as a reconstruction of the lower extremities to form a resemblance to the strong mental impression made on the mother's nervous organism. For, at the advanced period of gestation (fourth month) at which this shock occurred, the extremities must have been fairly formed. The "how" and the "why" let the psychologist and embryologist explain. The fact and not a theory confronts us. I hope at some future meeting to be able to present to this Association this unfortunate but interesting child, representing the physical effect of a mental evolution or rather reversion. 2 |