birthmark persistent, visible marks on the surface of the body, present from the time of birth, usually a naevus: a local overgrowth of blood vessels, or
haemangioma.
From ancient times, birthmarks have traditionally been seen as a consequence of a mother's fears, fantasies, or unfulfilled cravings, and this idea acquired a certain doctrinal character during the Enlightenment. Before the eighteenth century the association of maternal passions and emotions with skin blemishes, with certain forms of bodily deformities, and, ultimately, with ‘monsters’ was based on little more than numerous testimonials and anecdotes. Both Aristotle and Hippocrates had cited the maternal imagination to account for birthmarks and abnormalities. It was also in that vein of pathological explanation that the theory survived during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Though it was provisionally abandoned by the scientific élite of the seventeenth century, discussion on whether there was any form of correlation between maternal emotions and fetal conformation continued during the eighteenth century and in Romanticism, in popular culture, in folklore, and, to a lesser extent, in scientific and pseudoscientific literature.
Prior to the first important systematization of the powers of maternal imagination, by the French theologian and philosoper Malebranche in the late seventeenth century, stories about the effects of the mother's thoughts upon the fetus had been on the increase, mainly in compendia and treatises of natural history. These sources show, however, considerable variation in the basic principles: similar causes, the fears and cravings of the mother, did not produce the same effects in all cases, and for the most part, they did not produce any effect whatsoever. On the other hand, even the most fervent upholder of the powers of the imagination on the fetus was willing to call into question the veracity of many of the stories compiled within scholarly or popular traditions. Beginning with the book of Genesis, where Jacob is said to have produced spotted cattle by presenting the animals with lined rods, the alleged powers of the mother's imagination resulted in the most extraordinary fabrications. The French historian Paradin, for example, wrote about the niece of Pope Nicholas III, who gave birth to a child covered with hair, and with bear claws instead of fingers. Another was born with his tripes hanging from his belly because the slaughter of a sheep was contemplated by the mother. And the Dutch scholar Schenkius informs us that a woman from Louvain who conceived on the day of the Epiphany gave birth to three children of three different races.
Despite the lack of evidence traditionally associated with these stories, from 1690 to 1700, communications concerning teratology (the science that deals with fetal malformations) in the
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London and the
Mémoires of the French Académie, Paris, frequently debated the possibility of the power of the maternal imagination. Furthermore, after the publication in 1714 of
De morbis cutaneis, by the English surgeon Daniel Turner, a dispute occurred, first in England and then on the Continent, about the influence of the maternal imagination on the creation of birthmarks and other forms of major or minor abnormalities. The repercussions of this ongoing debate lasted until the late eighteenth century: even after the English surgeon John Hunter had denied the reality of the power of the mother's imagination in a thoughtful empirical study, the French physician Louis Nicolas Benjamin Bablot wrote opposing treatises on the subject. The French surgeon Jean-Baptista Demangeon did likewise at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Even in the late nineteenth century numerous articles were published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association which supported the theory. The scholars Gould and Pyle in their famous book
Anomalies and Curiosities of the Medicine, published in 1896, also supported the belief. And even though most teratologists today would agree that major physical malformations do not result from maternal impressions, some behavioural scientists still consider that certain prenatal events, such as maternal stress, may have an effect on fetal development.
Javier Moscoso
See also
congenital abnormalities.
