There is a wide-spread persuasion that a child, while carried in the womb of its mother, may be marked as the result of incidents that produce violent impressions upon her nervous system. This is so old a conviction in the human race and would seem to be substantiated by so much evidence that it is extremely difficult to convince people that there is no scientific basis for it. As a matter of fact, however, there is something mysterious about the way in which certain things that happen to the mother seem to affect the child _in utero_. As the result of the common belief in the truth of maternal impressions, mothers sometimes are prone to blame themselves for not having been sufficiently circumspect during the time of their pregnancy, and accordingly they may seek advice and consolation in the matter from clergymen. Women sometimes become very much depressed as a consequence of an unfortunate event of this kind, and as the simple truth is the best possible source of consolation, it would seem that a special chapter should be given to the subject in a work of this kind. The evidence for the truth of the theory of maternal impression is almost entirely due to peculiar coincidences. James I. of England, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, could never stand, according to Sir Walter Scott, the sight of a drawn sword with equanimity, and it is said even that he nearly fainted at his coronation because of an unexpected glimpse of some naked blades in the hands of courtiers. This peculiarity was attributed to the fact that his mother, while carrying him _in utero,_ had witnessed the violent death of her secretary, the unfortunate David Rizzio. There have been, however, any {61} number of men who paled at the sight of a drawn sword before and since James I., with regard to whom no such circumstantial story could be told to account for it. There have been any number of women that have witnessed bloody murders under circumstances quite as heartrending as those surrounding Mary Queen of Scots and her secretary, and yet their offspring, though at the time _in utero_, have not been disturbed at the sight of drawn swords, nor of blood or any other circumstance connected with the deep impression that must have been produced on their mothers.