" Van Helmont cites the case of a tailor's wife at
Mechlin, who during a conflict outside her house, on seeing a
soldier lose his hand at her door, gave birth to a daughter with
one hand, the other hand being a bleeding stump; he also speaks
of the case of the wife of a merchant at Antwerp, who after
seeing a soldier's arm shot off at the siege of Ostend gave birth
to a daughter with one arm. Plot speaks of a child bearing the
figure of a mouse; when pregnant, the mother had been much
frightened by one of these animals. Gassendus describes a fetus
with the traces of a wound in the same location as one received
by the mother. The Lancet speaks of several cases--one of a child
with a face resembling a dog whose mother had been bitten; one of
a child with one eye blue and the other black, whose mother
during confinement had seen a person so marked; of an infant with
fins as upper and lower extremities, the mother having seen such
a monster; and another, a child born with its feet covered with
scalds and burns, whose mother had been badly frightened by
fireworks and a descending rocket. There is the history of a
woman who while pregnant at seven months with her fifth child was
bitten on the right calf by a dog.
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