Congenital

“ Yet probably they have not hurt the essential nature of the children. Congenital defects are rare; the doctor discovers even a high average of constitutional fitness, due, it may be, to severe "natural" selection weeding out the more delicate. ”

“ It is time that the medical and teaching profession should realize that functional neurosis is not congenital, not inborn, not hereditary, but is the result of a defective, fear-inspiring education in early child life. ”

“ As used in this section, the term "unborn children" or "unborn child" shall include all unborn child [sic] or children or the offspring of human beings from the moment of conception until birth at every stage of biological development. ”

“ The number of the offspring is greatly reduced. The ovum of the female and the sperm of the male become microscopic. The germ of life remains within the body of the mother until it has reached that stage of development which fits it for its independent life in the outer world. The pe [Pg 80] riod from conception to birth is greatly prolonged, and the periods of deliverance from the necessity of the reproductive act are alike extended. The higher in the scale the more dependent the offspring, until in the instance of man the offspring is the most helpless and dependent of all. ”

“ A WRONG TO THE MOTHER AND CHILD.—Sometimes the mother is diseased; the outlet from the womb, as a result of laceration by a previous child-birth, is frequently enlarged, thus allowing conception to take place very readily, and hence she has children in rapid succession. Besides the wrong to the mother in having children in such rapid succession, it is a great injustice to the babe in the womb and the one at the breast that they should follow each other so quickly that one is conceived while the other is nursing. ”

“ In regard to cases where children are marked before birth, he says: “The effect must be produced upon the maternal blood, and transmitted through it to the fœtus, since there is no nervous communication between the parent and offspring.”
On every hand, life is full of facts illustrative of the influence of the mental and physical conditions of the mother on the organic structure and constitutional tendencies of the body and soul of her unborn child. ”

“ Persons of different temperaments uniting in marriage, always produces a good effect upon offspring.
4. THE PROPER TIME.—To obtain the best results, conception should take place only when both parties are in the best physical condition. If either parent is in any way indisposed at the time of conception the results will be seen in the health of the child. Many children brought in the world with diseases or other infirmities stamped upon their feeble frames show the indiscretion and ignorance of parents. ”

“ Menstruation and child-bearing are, as we have seen, intimately connected with each other. Suppose a woman could bear children at any period of her life she might choose, what a premature offspring would that be which she would bring forth in childhood, and what a feeble, decrepid one in old age. ”

“ EVIDENCES.—Many evidences are found in ancient history, especially among the refined nations, showing that certain expedients were resorted to by which their females, during the period of utero-gestation, were surrounded by the superior refinements of the age, with the hope of thus making upon them impressions which should have the effect of communicating certain desired qualities to the offspring. ”

“ This life-form, thus started, grows according to the laws of its becoming more and more, until, at the expiration of a fixed period, which varies greatly in different animals, it becomes a complete young individual, of the nature and kind of its parents. The fertilization of the ovum in the female is called conception; its growing state is called gestation, and its birth, on becoming a separate being, is called parturition. In its growing condition, and before its birth, the new young life form is known as the foetus. ”

“ Young women of mature years should be made familiar with the physiological conditions which attend conception and maternity, and they need to know that from the [Pg 172] moment of conception life exists in the embryo, and that from the moment the spermatozoön enters and assimilates with the ovum a separate individual life is really begun, and that she is, at that very moment, the mother of this life within her as truly as when, in the later months, she feels the quickening within her, or after its birth experiences the joy of a mother who clasps her newborn infant in her arms. ”

“ As used in this section, the term ``born alive ́ ́, with respect to a member of the species homo sapiens, means the complete expulsion or extraction from his or her mother of that member, at any stage of development, who after such expulsion or extraction breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion. ”

“ There is some uncertainty respecting the exact length of the period of gestation, which grows out of the difficulty of determining, in many cases, the exact time when conception takes place.
Uterine Life.—The uterine life of the new individual begins with the impregnation of the ovum, which occurs the instant it is brought in contact with the zoösperms of the male. While in the uterus, the young life is supported wholly by the mother. She is obliged to provide not only for her own sustenance, but for the maintenance of her child. ”

“ The surest guarantee against the occurrence of conditions which may injuriously affect the future offspring, either at the time of procreation, or during the subsequent period of gestation, is to be found in the general life of the parents. ”

“ That the embryo probably lives in utero in virtue of its own life-principle, even through the entire period of gestation, (51, 56, and 58,) is rendered probable by many facts related by unimpeached authorities, which go to prove that when the whole intact Ovum has been expelled at an advanced period of gestation, or at the natural termination of that period, the fœtus has continued to live, and the circulation of the blood has not ceased for an instant during a space of time of from nine minutes to a quarter of an hour. ”

“ Some have supposed that this was a case of spontaneous evolution of the fetus, a thing which has been known to occur in modern practice, proving that nature sometimes works in a very wonderful manner in these circumstances. It is certainly a very singular fact for the hand of one child to recede after coming into the world, and the other child to be born first. ”

“ The popular belief that prenatal influences on the mother affect the offspring physically, producing moles and other birth-marks, and even malformations of a more or less serious character, is said to be entirely unsupported by any trustworthy facts, and it is also rejected by physiologists on theoretical grounds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE PLACENTAL STAGE.—Although the third stage is chiefly concerned with the separation and the delivery of the after-birth, on which account it is known as the placental period, the description of other no less remarkable events belongs here. Even after the infant is born the umbilical cord extends from its navel to the placenta, just as it has done throughout pregnancy. Among larger mammals separation of the new-born from the mother is brought about in one of two ways; sometimes the activity of the young breaks the navel-string, though more frequently the mother bites it in two. ”

“ At a later period, indeed, when the embryo is larger, when the ovum or conception has contracted adhesions with the uterus, and the umbilical vessels have penetrated the caruncles, the chorion extends further, and at its extremities on either side, and as it were in a couple of appendices, there is a certain fluid of a yellow colour, which you might call excrementitious, kept separate and distinct.
The human conception scarcely differs in any respect from an egg during the first months of pregnancy. ”

“ PREGNANCY. CONCEPTION. In order to procreate the human species, there is a periodical discharge of blood from the vagina of every female, termed the catamenia, or menses. The secretion of this fluid commences at that period of life termed puberty, which occurs at different ages, according to the climate. In some latitudes it commences as early as eight or ten, and in others not until fifteen. As soon as conception or pregnancy commences, this discharge ceases, and goes to support the fœtus, or the child. ”

“ In a more technical sense, however, the use of the term embryo is limited to the first six weeks of pregnancy and designates the condition of the young creature before it has acquired the form and the organs of the infant; after that time the unborn child is called a fetus. Embryonic development, therefore, in the strictest sense of the term, chiefly involves the shifting of various groups of cells and the bestowal upon them of different kinds of activity. ”

“ Perhaps the root of the difficulty lies in the fact that childbirth, as well as the attendant suffering and death, are so familiar that they are regarded as being normal incidents in the ordinary course of affairs.
One of the most dramatic of all human events, the birth of a new being, is accepted casually, almost without concern, because it is so frequent—so commonplace. ”

“ The Womb is nothing more than the receptacle in which the impregnated egg is placed, and in which it undergoes all the wonderful changes by which it eventually is developed into a perfect human being. The womb is not therefore absolutely needed in conception, and indeed several cases have been known where the new being was formed without the womb altogether, though not perfectly. Its principal use is in fœtal development, which cannot take place perfectly in any other part of the body. ”

“ We have already seen that anything affecting the offspring during this period has to be reckoned as environmental, our formula reading, Mammal = germ + intra-maternal environment + external environment. It is evident, then, that all that a child possesses at birth is not necessarily hereditary, since the unborn child may be influenced by conditions prevailing in either parent. ”

“ They prove that the embryo, called into existence by the mysterious act of fecondation (the only point that is mysterious about the process of generation according to Cuvier) may, and will, and does live independently of the mother,—with a life wholly its own, and that it derives from its parent growth only, or accretion of substance, as I stated in my preliminary observations. The museum of the Royal College of Surgeons supplies a most striking illustration, and I may add, corroboration of this opinion. ”

“ The disturbance of uterine existence between conception and birth is that which has engaged most attention, and the fact that such disturbances can take place requires that the expectant mother should be protected from anything that can so act on her own organism as to prevent the due operation of the law of heredity. ”

“ But as the object of the present work is to illustrate abortion, and not the complete life-circle of the fœtus, I shall stop the number of my propositions at the fifth iiimonth of its intro-uterine existence. After that period, the various phenomena of fœtal gestation are so uniform, that they afford less matter of interest to the philosopher.
13. Conception, or that result which follows sexual congress, in virtue of which one, or more individuals, of the same species is called into being, takes place in the ovarium of women. ”

“ I will now show the several situations of the child in the mother’s womb, according to the 111different times of pregnancy, by which those that are contrary to nature, and are the chief cause of all ill labours, will be more easily conceived by the understanding midwife. It ought, therefore, in the first place, to be observed, that the infant, as well male as female, is generally situated in the midst of the womb ”

“ The ideas which are now entertained respecting fecundation, after the successful congress of the two sexes, in the human species—respecting its seat—respecting the first origin, station, and rudimental creation of the embryo—respecting the journey of the latter into the womb, its sojourn in that cavity, and the various metamorphoses it undergoes therein, up to the period fixed for its projection into the WORLD, may be comprised within a small number of propositions. ”

“ By the thirtieth day the tiny embryo is already one-third of an inch big, and were it practicable, which, of course, it is not, to remove it living from its bed of tissue in the mother’s womb and examine it, even with the naked eye, and still more with a magnifying glass, it would be possible to see the rudiments of the legs, head and arms which are to be. ”

“ Many claims are made that a child is seven months at birth which are based on the mis-counting of the date of conception or a desire to conceal a pre-marital conception. When one is shown, as one sometimes is, a bouncing, healthy, ordinary baby, and told that it was “a very forward seven months child,” those who know can only smile or sigh, according to the circumstances, for an ordinary, healthy, bouncing baby with nails and well formed skin has never yet been generated in seven months. ”