's) were made
without reference to maternal impressions, but it may be pointed
out that under no conceivable circumstance could we find a brain
in so virginal and receptive a state as is the child's in the
womb.

On the whole we see that pregnancy induces a psychic state which is at
once, in healthy persons, one of full development and vigor, and at the
same time one which, especially in individuals who are slightly abnormal,
is apt to involve a state of strained or overstrained nervous tension and
to evoke various manifestations which are in many respects still
imperfectly understood. Even the specifically sexual emotions tend to be
heightened, more especially during the earlier period of pregnancy. In 24
cases of pregnancy in which the point was investigated by Harry Campbell,
sexual feeling was decidedly increased in 8, in one case (of a woman aged
31 who had had four children) being indeed only present during pregnancy,
when it was considerable; in only 7 cases was there diminution or
disappearance of sexual feeling.[199] Pregnancy may produce mental
depression;[200] but on the other hand it frequently leads to a change of
the most favorable character in the mental and general well-being. Some
women indeed are only well during pregnancy. It is remarkable that some
women who habitually suffer from various nervous troubles--neuralgias,
gastralgia, headache, insomnia--are only free from them at this moment.
This "paradox of gestation," as Vinay has termed it, is specially marked
in the hysterical and those suffering from slight nervous disorders, but
it is by no means universal, so that although it is possible, Vinay
states, to confirm the opinion of the ancients as to the beneficial
action of marriage on hysteria, that is only true of slight cases and
scarcely enables us to counsel marriage in hysteria.[201] Even a woman's
intelligence is sometimes heightened by pregnancy, and Tarnier, as quoted
by Vinay, knew many women whose intelligence, habitually somewhat obtuse,
has only risen to the normal level during pregnancy.[202] The pregnant
woman has reached the climax of womanhood; she has attained to that state
toward which the periodically recurring menstrual wave has been drifting
her at regular intervals throughout her sexual life[203]; she has achieved
that function for which her body has been constructed, and her mental and
emotional disposition adapted, through countless ages.

And yet, as we hav