Dr. Holbrook says, “Every child born into the world is essentially an experiment; we cannot tell what its chief characteristics will be; these depend upon the potentialities stored up in the germ-plasm.” Then how much depends upon the parents, that the germ-plasm be of fine quality, and so insure fine products in their children. In his book on Stirpiculture, Dr. Holbrook says, “The common people often get at truths in a rude way long before the scientists do. Many parents tell us their children are strongly influenced by some particular occupation of the mother during pregnancy. So strong is this belief that many mothers are in our time trying to influence the characters of their unborn children by special modes of life, by cultivating music, or art, or science, in order to give the child a love for these pursuits.” Apropos to this statement, we can attest many instances that have come under our immediate observation. Study and research along certain lines, and in special directions have brought the results desired, and the children have become what they were trained to be in intra-uterine life. “What do you expect to do when you get to America?” asked a fellow-passenger of a woman who was crossing the Atlantic about a century ago. “Do? why raise governors for them.” And she was as good as her word, for she became the mother of General John Sullivan, the chief magistrate of New Hampshire, and of James Sullivan, governor of Massachusetts. “She who thinks skim milk will transmit skim milk; she who thinks cream will transmit cream.” This woman thought cream and lived it and transmitted the best to her children. Young women do not stop in your research with the few thoughts that can be given in a chapter like this, but go on in the study until you know what it has to teach you and what you may give to your unborn children, by painstaking study and culture of yourself. Begin by weeding out the habits and tendencies that you would not wish to transmit, and by cultivating the qualities and accomplishments, which you would delight to see repeated in your children. Depend upon it the study and care will reward you bountifully, and you will do your part in furthering the knowledge of this great science, which means so much to the generations to come. “A partnership with God is motherhood; What strength, what purity, what self-control, What love, what wisdom, should belong to her, Who helps God fashion an immortal soul.” CHAPTER XII. AILMENTS OF PREGNANCY. Pregnancy not an Unnatural but a Normal State.—Tendency to Neglect Hygienic Rules.—Morning Sickness.—How to Correct it.—Important Questions of Diet.—Displaced Uterus as Cause of Nausea.—Mental States.—Companionship.—Various Gastric Troubles.—Insomnia.—Hysteria.—Constipation and How to Correct it.—Longings.—Self-control.—With Proper Care, as a Rule All Goes Well.