WOUND DUPLICATED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19298, 10 April 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

WOUND DUPLICATED.

FATHER AND HIS CHILD. IN PAIN SIMULTANEOUSLY. A strange story of a wound in a father repeating itself in the child was told to tho Loughborough coroner, Mr. H. J. Deane, at tho inquest on Henry Jayes, aged twenty-eight, a shoe-hand, who shot himself on his allotment. Tho evidence of relatives was that Jayes was wounded in tho back (hiring the war. His daughter Mary, born subsequently, has had a hole in her back since birth in tho samo spot, and when Jayes suffered from the effects of his wound tho child suffered too, and would cry out with pain. Her father worried over her condition, and his last entry in his diary read *' This is the end of it all. Take Mary to the doctor and let her be examined. God forgive me for this rash act." A verdict of " Suicide while of unsound mind" was returned. " The case," said an eminent London doctor, whose opinion was asked subsequently, " is the first of its kind I have ever heard of. I can attach little credence to it' possibility. It used to bo believed that maternal impressions before birth brought about simi'ar results to thos<! recited in this case, but authorities have proved this belief to be a fallacy. Darwin disproved the theory by many* experiments on animals."