defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the medial line so that (as he
said) one ear could hear what the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or
twilight sleep, the prolungation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by
reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid
(as exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix,
artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent
upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the species in the case
of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of
delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of
multigeminal, twikindled and monstruous births conceived during the
catamenic period or of consanguineous parents — in a word all the cases of
human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with
chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and
forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular
beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to
step over a country stile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle
her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently
and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person
which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities
of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro’s inkle, strawberry mark
and portwine stain were alleged by one as a primafacie and natural hypothetical
explanation of swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not
forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic
memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical
traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic
development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate
sustained against both these views with such heat as almost carried conviction
the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority
being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur
which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages
of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but
shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from
Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none better than he
knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean
old man. Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between
Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and
theological dilemma in the even of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other,
Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/394
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