B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

“ HEREDITARY EFFECTS.—Those who are born to become insane do not necessarily spring from insane parents, or from any ancestry having any apparent taint of lunacy in their blood, but they do receive from their progenitors certain impressions upon their mental and moral, as well as their physical beings, which impressions, like an iron mould, fix and shape their subsequent destinies. Hysteria in the mother may develop insanity in the child, while drunkenness in the father may impel epilepsy, or mania, in the son. ”

“ Ungoverned passions in the parents may unloose the furies of unrestrained madness in the minds of their children, and the bad treatment of the wife may produce sickly or weak-minded children.
3. The influence of predominant passion may be transmitted from the parent to the child, just as surely a similarity of looks. It has been truly said that "the faculties which predominate in power and activity in the parents, when the organic existence of the child commences, determine its future mental disposition." A bad mental condition of the mother may produce serious defects upon her unborn child. ”

“ AN ILLUSTRATION.—If a sudden and powerful emotion of a woman's mind exerts such an influence upon her stomach as to excite vomiting, and upon her heart as almost to arrest its motion and induce fainting, can we believe that it will have no effect upon her womb and the fragile being contained within it? ”