Klebs, Schaaffhausen, and others have sought to show that the mothers of microcephalic children have suffered from severe pains of the uterus during pregnancy. All scientific men consider that spasms of the uterus distinctly affect the development of the brain of the offspring. Flesch thinks it possible that these spasms of the uterus may have something to do with the origin of microcephaly.[91] But he also asks whether this morbid condition of the uterus may not have been produced by a previously diseased condition of the offspring. This observer is, moreover, still more inclined to make the influence of the father responsible for the occurrence of microcephaly. In view of the fact that there is much reason to suppose there has been a compression of the uterus, and in default of any better suggestion, Flesch feels justified in looking for a compression which has perhaps resulted from some growth on the ovary. Hence ensues a disturbance, probably inflammatory, of the organ of nutrition.[92] Aeby also regards microcephaly, not as an expression of atavism, but as the result of a morbid degeneration. “Microcephalic subjects do not point back to the milestone which man left behind him in hoar antiquity, and it is not through them that the chasm between man and animals can be bridged over, nor even rendered less wide.” Virchow’s researches led to the following conclusions, which we must here subjoin:--1. There is no species of apes which presents that precise configuration which is found in a microcephalic brain. 2. Psychology offers the strongest arguments against men-apes. 3. The instinctive side of psychical activity, which is almost wholly absent in microcephalic subjects, is very prominent in anthropoids as well as in other animals.[93]