The child will most
resemble the one who contributes most to the formation of the
parts." Such was the Hippocratic theory of generation and
heredity, and it was ingeniously used to explain the hereditary
nature of certain diseases and malformations. For instance, in
speaking of the sacred disease (epilepsy), Hippocrates says: "Its
origin is hereditary, like that of other diseases; for if a
phlegmatic person be born of a phlegmatic, and a bilious of a
bilious, and a phthisical of a phthisical, and one having spleen
disease of another having disease of the spleen, what is to
hinder it from happening that where the father and mother were
subject to this disease certain of their offspring should be so
affected also? As the semen comes from all parts of the body,
healthy particles will come from healthy parts, and unhealthy
from unhealthy parts."
According to Pare, Damascene saw a girl with long hair like a
bear, whose mother had constantly before her a picture of the
hairy St. John. Pare also appends an illustration showing the
supposed resemblance to a bear. Jonston quotes a case of
Heliodorus; it was an Ethiopian, who by the effect of the
imagination produced a white child. Pare describes this case more
fully: "Heliodorus says that Persina, Queen of Ethiopia, being
impregnated by Hydustes, also an Ethiopian, bore a daughter with
a white skin, and the anomaly was ascribed to the admiration that
a picture of Andromeda excited in Persina throughout the whole of
the pregnancy.
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