{"id":6298,"date":"2016-02-22T20:12:26","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T02:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=6298"},"modified":"2023-12-16T15:36:21","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T21:36:21","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-february-22-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=6298","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 22, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Grotesquely Well-Hung\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

The mechanism of heredity – how exactly traits got passed from generation to generation – baffled even the most intelligent thinkers, and the vagaries of this process led to many of the wilder theories that circulated before and even during the 1800s. One ubiquitous folk theory, “Maternal impressions,” held that if a pregnant woman saw something ghoulish or suffered intense emotions, the experience would scar her child. One woman who never satisfied an intense prenatal craving for strawberries gave birth to a baby covered with red, strawberry-shaped splotches. The same could happen with bacon. Another woman bashed her head on a sack of coal, and her child had half, but only half, a head of black hair. More direly, doctors in the 1600s reported that a woman in Naples, after being startled by sea monsters, bore a son covered in scales, who ate fish exclusively and gave off fishy odors. Bishops told cautionary tales of a woman who seduced her actor husband backstage in full costume. He was playing Mephistopheles; they had a child with hooves and horns. A beggar with one arm spooked a woman into having a one-armed child. Pregnant women who pulled off crowded streets to pee in churchyards, invariably produced bed wetters. Carrying fireplace logs about in your apron, next to the bulging tummy, would produce a grotesquely well-hung lad. About the only recorded happy case of maternal impressions involved a patriotic woman in Paris in the 1790s whose son had a birthmark on his chest shaped like a Phrygian cap – those elfish hats with a flop of material on top. Phrygian caps were symbols of freedom to the new French republic, and the delighted government awarded her a lifetime pension.<\/p>\n

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Viva La Pension!<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Much of this folklore intersected with religious belief, and people naturally interpreted serious birth defects – \u00a0cyclopean eyes, external hearts, full coats of body hair – as back-of-the-Bible warnings about sin, wrath, and divine justice. One example from the 1680s involved a cruel bailiff in Scotland named Bell, who arrested two female religious dissenters, lashed them to poles near the shore, and let the tide swallow them. Bell added insult by taunting the women, then drowned the younger, more stubborn one with his own hands.Later, when asked about the murders, Bell always laughed, joking that the women must having a high time now, scuttling around among the crabs. The joke was on Bell: after he married, his children were born with a severe defect that twisted their forearms into to awful pincers. These crab claws proved highly heritable to their children and grandchildren too. It didn’t take a biblical scholar to see that the iniquity of the father had been visited upon the children, unto the third and fourth generations. (And beyond: cases ppopped up in Scotland as late as 1900.)<\/p>\n

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\nDoin’ It Grady Style! \u00a0(Grady Stiles, The Lobster Boy)<\/p>\n

Culled from: The Violinist’s Thumb and Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written By Our Genetic Code<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Morbid Trinket Du Jour!<\/h3>\n

A shirt that hits The Comtesse oh so very close to home!
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\nAvailable from nihilistmemes<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Grotesquely Well-Hung\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The mechanism of heredity – how exactly traits got passed from generation to generation – baffled even the most intelligent thinkers, and the vagaries of this process led to many of the wilder theories that circulated before and even during the 1800s. One ubiquitous folk theory, “Maternal impressions,” held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts","category-trinkets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6298"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12175,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6298\/revisions\/12175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}