mother.  The contribution of the father has been secured under conditions shockingly humiliating to her, in amounts totally inadequate to her and the child’s support.  In Illinois, $550 over 5 years; Tennessee, $40 the first year, $30 the second, $20 the third. (See studies of the Boston Conference on Illegitimacy, September, 1914, p. 47.) Moreover, the situation was so desperate that physicians, social workers and relatives have conspired to save the girl’s respectability at the risk of the child’s life and at the cost of all spiritual and educative value of the experience of motherhood.  This has meant a greatly higher death rate among illegitimate infants, a higher crime and a higher dependency rate.”

The fifth of the dysgenic influences which has been fostered by the institutional taboo is uncovered by recent studies of the effect of certain emotions on the human organism.  The life of woman has long been shadowed by the fact that she has been the weaker sex; that even when strong she has been weighted by her child; and that throughout the period of private property she has been the poor sex, dependent on some male for her support.  In an age of force, fear has been her strong emotion.  If she felt rage it must be suppressed.  Disappointment and discouragement had also to be borne in silence and with patience.  Of such a situation Davies says: 

“The power of the mind over the body is a scientific fact, as is evidenced by hypnotic suggestion and in the emotional control over the chemistry of health through the agency of the internal secretions.  The reproductive processes are very susceptible to chemic influences.  Thus the influences of the environment may in some degree carry through to the offspring."[2]

The studies of Drs Crile and Cannon show that the effects of fear on the ganglionic cells are tremendous.  Some of the cells are exhausted and completely destroyed by intensity and duration of emotion.  Cannon’s experiments on animals during fear, rage, anger, and hunger, show that the entire nervous system is involved and that internal and external functions change their normal nature and activity.  The thyroid and adrenal glands are deeply affected.  In times of intense emotion, the thyroid gland throws into the system products which cause a quickened pulse, rapid respiration, trembling, arrest of digestion, etc.  When the subjects of experiments in the effect of the emotions of fear, rage, etc., are examined, it is found that the physical development, especially the sexual development, is retarded.  Heredity, age, sex, the nervous system of the subject, and the intensity and duration of the shock must all have consideration.  Griesinger, Amard and Daguin emphasize especially the results of pain, anxiety and shock, claiming that they are difficult or impossible to treat.