Today's Trivia
There was a time when some doctors considered this pregnancy symptom a harbinger of “idiocy” for the fetus. Which was it?
There was a time when throwing up during pregnancy wasn’t just seen as a frustrating symptom. Instead, some doctors considered this fetus-induced queasiness as the harbinger of a lifelong, debilitating condition for the unborn child—and they called this condition “idiocy.”
Back in the late 1800s, beliefs about this so-called “poverty of the mind” were rapidly evolving. Vomiting during pregnancy was just one of many hypothesized causes, with everything from neurotic parents to the weather considered possible culprits at one time or another. At the extreme, some medical professionals even saw idiocy as a moral failure—a sign that children, or their parents, had “so far violated the natural laws” that their bodies were no longer fit to house the “powers of the soul.” (Read on Nautilus)
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