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Modern medical knowledge to the contrary, it is my observation that the great majority of mothers firmly believe that a child may be deformed before birth by a physical or mental shock to the mother. I have heard this point argued a great many times and have heard of a great many examples where a child was deformed after the mother had received a severe physical or mental shock during pregnancy. Possibly the most convincing of these examples which have come under my observation is the following which I relate to you substantially as it occurred.
An expectant mother was living in a public boarding house in a small town in the western part of this state (North Carolina) several years ago. Her room was on the second floor of the house. There was only one bath on the second floor which was used by all those who occupied that floor. One afternoon this woman went to the bathroom to bathe. When she opened the door she saw a naked man in the tub. Three months later her baby was born without any clothes on.
PAUL R. ERVIN
Charlotte, N. C.
Polo Handicapping
Sirs:
Will you kindly explain to a poor ignorant cowhand just how a polo handicap works? If it means that Tommy Hitchcock, for instance, has to have ten goals before he can count one, I think I might be able to take him on next year.
G. W. HENDRICKS
San Francisco, Calif.
Polo handicaps are assigned to individuals by the U. S. Polo Association on a careful but inexact comparative basis, with ten goals the maximum, for ablest players. In handicap polo, individual handicaps are added and figured inversely to arrive at team handicaps. Thus: Poloist Hitchcock's handicap of ten goals is added to the handicaps of whatever three players he teams with. The difference between their total handicaps and the total of whatever team they play is taken as the weaker team's handicap, the number of given goals with which the weaker team enters the game to the other team's zero.-ED.
Scene of Death
Sirs:
Saw an interesting Paramount newsreel the other evening. Shots of the recent Cuban massacres. Picture of Jiminez, Chief of La Porrista, lying dead and very bloody, surrounded by many laughing natives.
Next shot was that of a lieutenant of Jiminez, on the second floor of his home, pleading for his life to a frenzied mob on the streets below. Two mobsters unheedingly climbed up a ladder held in place by the throng, long knives in their hands.
The three of them struggled for a while, and before the horrified eyes of many San Franciscans, accompanied by screams from a female portion of the audience, said lieutenant was stabbed to death, amid rousing cheers from the Cuban mob.
Now, I personally thought all this was very swell, and quite bloodthirsty. . . . But I have been under the impression that scenes of actual death were taboo in the movies.
Would TIME, solver of many "Things I Never Knew Till Now," (please explain. . . .
ROBERT E. COLMAN
San Francisco, Calif.
The Hays Code for the cinema industry does not apply to newsreels, contains no restrictions on scenes of death. Such scenes occur rarely not because they are taboo but because newsreel men, however alert, rarely have the luck to photograph them.—ED.
TIME & Shark
Sirs: