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In association with Edinburgh Hypnotherapy
Case Studies
Dr. Ian
Stevenson The
Pioneer of Reincarnation Research
 Ian
Stevenson was the former head of the Department of Psychiatry at the
University of Virginia, and was Director of the Division of Perceptual
Studies at the University of Virginia. He devoted the last 40 years of his
life to the scientific documentation of past life memories of children
from all over the world and has over 3000 cases in his files. Many people,
including sceptics and scholars, agree that these cases offer the best
evidence yet for reincarnation.
Dr. Stevenson's research into the possibility of
reincarnation began in 1960 when he heard of a case in Sri Lanka where a
child claimed to remember a past life. He thoroughly questioned the child
and the child's parents, as well as the people whom the child claimed were
his parents from his past life. This led to Dr. Stevenson's conviction
that reincarnation was possibly a reality. The more cases he pursued, the
greater became his drive to scientifically open up and conquer an unknown
territory among the world's mysteries, which until now had been excluded
from scientific observation. Nonetheless, he believed he could approach
and possibly furnish proof of its reality with scientific means.
In 1960, Dr. Stevenson published two articles in
the Journal of the American
Society for Psychical Research about children who remembered past
lives. In 1974, he published his book,
Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, and became well known
wherever this book appeared by those people who already had a
long-standing interest in this subject. They were pleased to finally be
presented with such fundamental research into reincarnation from a
scientific source. In 1997, Dr. Stevenson published his work entitled
Reincarnation and Biology. In the first volume, he mainly describes
birthmarks - those distinguishing marks on the skin which the newborn baby
brings into the world and cannot be explained by inheritance alone. In his
second volume, Dr. Stevenson focuses mainly on deformities and other
anomalies that children are born with and which cannot be traced back to
inheritance, prenatal or perinatal (created during birth) occurrences.
This monumental piece of work contains hundreds of pictures documenting
the evidence.
During his original research into various cases
involving children's memories of past lives, Dr. Stevenson did note with
interest the fact that these children frequently bore lasting birthmarks
which supposedly related to their murder or the death they suffered in a
previous life. Stevenson's research into birthmarks and congenital defects
has such particular importance for the demonstration of reincarnation,
since it furnishes objective and graphic proof of reincarnation, superior
to the - often fragmentary - memories and reports of the children and
adults questioned, which even if verified afterwards cannot be assigned
the same value in scientific terms.
In many cases presented by Dr. Stevenson there
are also medical documents available as further proof, which are usually
compiled after the death of the person. Dr. Stevenson adds that in the
cases he researched and "solved" in which birthmarks and deformities were
present, he didn't suppose there was any other apposite explanation than
that of reincarnation. Only 30% - 60% of these deformities can be put down
to birth defects which related to genetic factors, virus infections or
chemical causes (like those found in children damaged by the drug
Thalidomide or alcohol). Apart from these demonstrable causes, the medical
profession has no other explanation for the other 40% to 70% of cases than
that of mere chance. Stevenson has now succeeded in giving us an
explanation of why a person is born with these deformities and why they
appear precisely in that part of their body and not in another.
Most of the cases where birthmarks and
congenital deformities are present for which no medical explanations exist
have one to five characteristics in common.
(1) In the most
unusual scenario, it is possible that someone who believed in
reincarnation expressed a wish to be reborn to a couple or one partner of
a couple. This is usually because they are convinced that they would be
well cared for by those particular people. Such preliminary requests are
often expressed by the Tlingit Indians
of Alaska and by the
Tibetans.
(2) More
frequent than this are the occurrences of prophetic dreams. Someone who
has died appears to a pregnant or not as yet pregnant woman and tells her
that he or she will be reborn to her. Sometimes relatives or friends have
dreams like this and will then relate the dream to the mother to be. Dr.
Stevenson found these prophetic dreams to be particularly prolific in
Burma and among the Indians in Alaska.
(3) In these cultures the body
of a newborn child is checked for recognizable marks to establish whether
the deceased person they had once known has been reborn to them. This
searching for marks of identification is very common among cultures that
believe in reincarnation, and especially among the Tlingit Indians and the
Igbos of Nigeria. Various tribes of
West Africa make marks on the body of the recently deceased in order to be
able to identify the person when he or she is reborn.
(4) The most frequently
occurring event or common denominator relating to rebirth is probably that
of a child remembering a past life. Children usually begin to talk about
their memories between the ages of two and four. Such infantile memories
gradually dwindle when the child is between four and seven years old.
There are of course always some exceptions, such as a child continuing to
remember its previous life but not speaking about it for various reasons.
Most of the children talk about their previous
identity with great intensity and feeling. Often they cannot decide for
themselves which world is real and which one is not. They often experience
a kind of double existence where at times one life is more prominent, and
at times the other life takes over. This is why they usually speak of
their past life in the present tense saying things like, "I have a husband
and two children who live in Jaipur." Almost all of them are able to tell
us about the events leading up to their death.
Such children tend to consider their previous
parents to be their real parents rather than their present ones, and
usually express a wish to return to them. When the previous family has
been found and details about the person in that past life have come to
light, then the origin of the fifth common denominator – the conspicuous
or unusual behaviour of the child - is becoming obvious.
(5) For
instance, if the child is born in India to a very low-class family and was
a member of a higher caste in its previous life, it may feel uncomfortable
in its new family. The child may ask to be served or waited on hand and
foot and may refuse to wear cheap clothes. Stevenson gives us several
examples of these unusual behaviour patterns.
In 35% of cases he investigated, children who
died an unnatural death developed phobias. For example, if they had
drowned in a past life then they frequently developed a phobia about going
out of their depth in water. If they had been shot, they were often afraid
of guns and sometimes loud bangs in general. If they died in a road
accident they would sometimes develop a phobia of travelling in cars,
buses or lorries.
Another frequently observed unusual form of
behaviour, which Dr. Stevenson called philias, concerns children who
express the wish to eat different kinds of food or to wear clothes that
were different from those of their culture. If a child had developed an
alcohol, tobacco or drug addiction as an adult in a previous incarnation
he may express a need for these substances and develop cravings at an
early age.
Many of these children with past-life memories
show abilities or talents that they had in their previous lives. Often
children who were members of the opposite sex in their previous life show
difficulty in adjusting to the new sex. These problems relating to the
'sex change' can lead to homosexuality later on in their lives. Former
girls who were reborn as boys may wish to dress as girls or prefer to play
with girls rather than boys.
Until now all these human oddities have been a
mystery to conventional psychiatrists - after all, the parents could not
be blamed for their children's behaviour in these cases. At long last
research into reincarnation is shedding some light on the subject. In the
past, doctors blamed such peculiarities on a lack or a surplus of certain
hormones, but now they will have to do some rethinking.
The following paper by Dr. Stevenson was
presented at the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the
Society for Scientific
Exploration held at Princeton University. June 11-13, 1992. The title
of the paper is "Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on
Deceased Persons" and provides perhaps the most compelling scientific
evidence suggestive of reincarnation. Dr. Stevenson's paper presents
evidence that physical characteristics, such as birthmarks and
deformities, may be carried over from a past life to a present life.
Birthmarks
and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons
ABSTRACT
Ian Stevenson,
Department of Psychiatric Medicine, University of Virginia,
School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908
Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi)
occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth
defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember
previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult
informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child
remembers. The cases of 210 such children have been investigated. The
birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas
of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of
increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were
nearly always of rare types. In cases in which a deceased person was
identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's
statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the
birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the
deceased person. In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a
post-mortem report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between
wounds and birthmarks (or birth defects). There is little evidence that
parents and other informants imposed a false identity on the child in
order to explain the child's birthmark or birth defect. Some paranormal
process seems required to account for at least some of the details of
these cases, including the birthmarks and birth defects.
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Figure 1.
Hypopigmented macule on chest of an Indian youth who, as a child,
said he remembered the life of a man, Maha Ram, who was killed with
a shotgun fired at close range. |
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Figure 2.
The circles show the principal shotgun wounds on Maha Ram, for
comparison with Figure 1. [This drawing is from the autopsy report
of the deceased.] |
INTRODUCTION
Although counts of moles (hyperpigmented nevi) have shown that the average
adult has between 15 and IX of them (Pack and Davis, 1956), little is
known about their cause -- except for those associated with the genetic
disease neurofibromatosis -- and even less is known about why birthmarks
occur in one location of the body instead of in another. In a few
instances a genetic factor has been plausibly suggested for the location
of nevi (Cockayne, 1933; Denaro, 1944; Maruri, 1961); but the cause of the
location of most birthmarks remains unknown. The causes of many, perhaps
most, birth defects remain similarly unknown. In large series of birth
defects in which investigators have searched for the known causes, such as
chemical teratogens (like thalidomide), viral infections, and genetic
factors, between 430/0 (Nelson and Holmes, 1989) and 65 -- 70% (Wilson,
1973) of cases have finally been assigned to the category of "unknown
causes."
Among 895 cases of children who claimed to remember a previous life (or
were thought by adults to have had a previous life), birthmarks and/or
birth defects attributed to the previous life were reported in 309 (35%)
of the subjects. The birthmark or birth defect of the child was said to
correspond to a wound (usually fatal) or other mark on the deceased person
whose life the child said it remembered. This paper reports an inquiry
into the validity of such claims. With my associates I have now carried
the investigation of 210 such cases to a stage where I can report their
details in a forthcoming book (Stevenson, forthcoming). This article
summarizes our findings.
Children who claim to remember previous lives have been found in every
part of the world where they have been looked for (Stevenson, 1983; 1987),
but they are found most easily in the countries of South Asia. Typically,
such a child begins to speak about a previous life almost as soon as it
can speak, usually between the ages of two and three; and typically it
stops doing so between the ages of five and seven (Cook, Pasricha,
Samararatne, Win Maung, and Stevenson, 1983). Although some of the
children make only vague statements, others give details of names and
events that permit identifying a person whose life and death corresponds
to the child's statements. In some instances the person identified is
already known to the child's family, but in many cases this is not so. In
addition to making verifiable statements about a deceased person, many of
the children show behaviour (such as a phobia) that is unusual in their
family but found to correspond to behaviour shown by the deceased person
concerned or conjecturable for him (Stevenson, 1987; 1990).
Although some of the birthmarks
occurring on these children are "ordinary" hyperpigmented nevi (moles) of
which every adult has some (Pack and Davis, 1956), most are not. Instead,
they are more likely to be puckered and scar-like, sometimes depressed a
little below the surrounding skin, areas of hairlessness, areas of
markedly diminished pigmentation (hypopigmented macules), or port-wine
stains (nevipammri). When a relevant birthmark is a hyperpigmented nevus,
it is nearly always larger in area than the "ordinary" hyperpigmented
nevus. Similarly, the birth defects in these cases are of unusual types
and rarely correspond to any of the "recognizable patterns of human
malformation" (Smith, 1982).
METHODS
My investigations of these cases included interviews, often repeated, with
the subject and with several or many other informants for both families.
With rare exceptions, only firsthand informants were interviewed. All
pertinent written records that existed, particularly death certificates
and post-mortem reports, were sought and examined. In the cases in which
the informants said that the two families had no previous acquaintance, I
made every effort to exclude all possibility that some information might
nevertheless have passed normally to the child, perhaps through a
half-forgotten mutual acquaintance of the two families. I have published
elsewhere full details about methods (Stevenson, 1975; 1987).
I did not accept any indicated mark as a birthmark unless a firsthand
witness assured me that it had been noticed immediately after the child's
birth or, at most, within a few weeks. I enquired about the occurrence of
similar birth marks in other members of the family; in nearly every
instance this was denied, but in seven cases a genetic factor could not be
excluded.
Birth defects of the kind in question here would be noticed immediately
after the child's birth. Inquiries in these cases excluded (again with
rare exceptions) the known causes of birth defects, such as close
biological relationship of the parents (consanguinity), viral infections
in the subject's mother during her pregnancy, and chemical causes of birth
defects like alcohol.
RESULTS
Correspondences
between Wounds and Birthmarks
A correspondence between
birthmark and wound was judged satisfactory if the birthmark and wound
were both within an area of 10 square centimetres at the same anatomical
location; in fact, many of the birthmarks and wounds were much closer to
the same location than this. A medical document, usually a post-mortem
report, was obtained in 49 cases. The correspondence between wound and
birthmark was judged satisfactory or better by the mentioned criterion in
43 (88%) of these cases and not satisfactory in 6 cases. Several different
explanations seem to be required to account for the discrepant cases, and
I discuss these elsewhere (Stevenson. forthcoming). Figure 1 shows a
birthmark (an urea of hypopigmentation) on an Indian child who said he
remembered the life of a man who had been killed with a shotgun fired at
close range. Figure 2 shows the location of the wounds recorded by the
pathologist. (The circles were drawn by an Indian physician who studied
the post-mortem report with me.)
The high proportion (88%) of concordance between wounds and birthmarks in
the cases for which we obtained post-mortem reports (or other confirming
documents) increases confidence in the accuracy of informants' memories
concerning the wounds on the deceased person in those more numerous cases
for which we could obtain no medical document. Not all errors of
informants memories would have resulted in attributing a correspondence
between birth marks and wounds that did nor exist; in four cases (possibly
five) reliance on an informant's memory would have resulted in missing a
correspondence to which a medical document attested.
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Figure 3.
Large verrucous epidermal nevus on head of a Thai man who as a child
said he remembered the life of his paternal uncle, who was killed
with a blow on the head from a heavy knife. |
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Figure 4. Congenital malformation of nail on right great toe of
the Thai subject shown in Figure 3. This malformation corresponded
to a chronic ulcer of the right great toe from which the subject's
uncle had suffered. |
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| Figure 5.
Small, round puckered birthmark on a Thai boy that corresponded to
the bullet wound of entry in a man whose life he said he remembered
and who had been shot with a rifle from behind. |
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| Figure 6.
Larger, irregularly shaped birthmark on the frontal area of the head
of the Thai boy shown in Figure 5. This birthmark corresponded to
the bullet wound of exit on the Thai man whose life the boy said he
remembered. |
Cases with Two or More
Birthmarks
The argument of chance as
accounting for the correspondence between birthmarks and wounds becomes
much reduced when the child has two or more birthmarks each corresponding
to a wound on the deceased person whose life he claims to remember. Figure
3 shows a major abnormality of the skin (verrucous epidermal nevus) on the
back of the head of a Thai man who, as a child, recalled the life of his
uncle, who had been struck on the head with a heavy knife and killed
almost instantly. The subject also had a deformed toenail of the right
great toe (Figure 4). This corresponded to a chronic infection of the same
toe from which the subject's uncle had suffered for some years before he
died.
The series includes 18 cases in which two birthmarks on a subject
corresponded to gunshot wounds of entry and exit. In 14 of these one
birthmark was larger than the other, and in 9 of these 14 the evidence
clearly showed that the smaller birthmark (usually round) corresponded to
the wound of entry and the larger one (usually irregular in shape)
corresponded to the wound of exit. These observations accord with the fact
that bullet wounds of exit are nearly always larger than wounds of entry (Fatteh,
1976; Gordon and Shapiro, 1982). Figure 5 shows a small round birthmark on
the back of the head of a Thai boy, and Figure 6 shows a larger,
irregularly shaped birthmark at the front of his head. The boy said that
he remembered the life of a man who was shot in the head from behind. (The
mode of death was verified, but no medical document was obtainable.) In
addition to the 9 cases I have investigated myself, Mills reported another
case having the feature of a small round birthmark (corresponding to the
wound of entry) and a larger birthmark corresponding to the wound of exit
(both verified by a post-mortem report) (Mills, 1989).
I have calculated the odds against chance of two birthmarks correctly
corresponding to two wounds. The surface area of the skin of the average
adult male is 1.6 meters (Spalteholz, 1943). If we were to imagine this
area square and spread on a fiat surface, its dimensions would be
approximately 127 centimetres by 127 centimetres. Into this area would fit
approximately 160 squares of the size 10 centimetres square that I
mentioned above. The probability that a single birthmark on a person would
correspond in location to a wound within the area of any of the 160
smaller squares is only 1/160. However, the probability of correspondences
between two birthmarks and two wounds would be (1/160)2 i.e. 1 in 25,600.
(This calculation assumes that birthmarks are uniformly distributed over
all regions of the skin. This is incorrect [Pack, Lenson, and Gerber,
1952], but I believe the variation can be ignored for the present
purpose.)
Examples of Other
Correspondences of Detail between Wounds and Birthmarks
A Thai woman had three
separate linear hypopigmented scar-like birthmarks near the midline of her
back; as a child she had remembered the life of a woman who was killed
when struck three times in the back with an ax. (Informants verified this
mode of death, but no medical record was obtainable.) A woman of Burma was
born with two perfectly round birthmarks in her left chest; they slightly
overlapped, and one was about half the size of the other. As a child she
said that she remembered the life of a woman who was accidentally shot and
killed with a shotgun. A responsible informant said the shotgun cartridge
had contained shot of two different sizes. (No medical record was
obtainable in this case.)
Another Burmese child said that she remembered the life of her deceased
aunt, who had died during surgery for congenital heart disease. This child
had a long, vertical linear hypopigmented birthmark close to the midline
of her lower chest and upper abdomen; this birthmark corresponded to the
surgical incision for the repair of the aunt's heart. (I obtained a
medical record in this case.) In contrast, a child of Turkey had a
horizontal linear birthmark across the right upper quadrant of his
abdomen. It resembled the scar of a surgeon's transverse abdominal
incision. The child said that he remembered the life of his paternal
grandfather, who had become jaundiced and was operated on before he died.
He may have had a cancer of the head of the pancreas, but I could not
learn a precise medical diagnosis.
Two Burmese subjects remembered as children the lives of persons who had
died after being bitten by venomous snakes, and the birthmarks of each
corresponded to therapeutic incisions made at the sites of the snakebites
on the persons whose lives they remembered. Another Burmese subject also
said as a child that she remembered the life of a child who had been
bitten on the foot by a snake and died. In this case, however, the child's
uncle had applied a burning cheroot to the site of the bite -- a folk
remedy for snakebite in parts of Burma; and the subject's birthmark was
round and located at the site on the foot where the bitten child's uncle
had applied the cheroot.
Three Examples of Birth Defects
Figure 8, below, shows the right side of the head of a Turkish boy with a
diminished and malformed ear (unilateral microtia). He also had
underdevelopment of the right side of his face (hemifacial microsomia). He
said that he remembered the life of a man who had been shot (with a
shotgun) at point-blank range. The wounded man was taken to a hospital
where he died 6 days later -- of injuries to the brain caused by shot that
had penetrated the right side of the skull. (I obtained a copy of the
hospital record.)
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Figure 8. Severely malformed ear (microtia) in a Turkish boy
who said that he remembered the life of a man who was fatally
wounded on the right side of the head by a shotgun discharged at
close range. |
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Figure 9. Almost absent fingers (brachydactyly) on one hand in
a boy of India who said he remembered the life of a boy of another
village who had put his hand into the blades of a fodderchopping
machine and had its fingers amputated. |
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| Figure 10.
Small, round puckered birthmark on a Thai boy that corresponded to
the bullet wound of entry in a man whose life he said he remembered
and who had been shot with a rifle from behind. |
Figure 9 shows
fingers almost absent congenitally on one hand (unilateral brachydactyly)
in a child of India who said he remembered the life of another child who
had put his right hand into the blades of a fodder-chopping machine and
lost his fingers. Most cases of brachydactyly involve only a shortening of
the middle phalanges. In the present case there were no phalangeal bones,
and the fingers were represented by mere stubs. Unilateral brachydactyly
is exceedingly rare, and I have not found a published report of a case,
although a colleague (plastic surgeon) has shown me a photograph of one
case that came under his care.
Figure 10 shows congenital absence of the lower right leg (unilateral
hemimelia) in a Burmese girl. She said that she remembered the life of a
girl who was run over by a train. Eyewitnesses said that the train severed
the girl's right leg first, before running over the trunk. Lower hemimelia
is an extremely rare condition, and Frantz and O'Rahilly (1961) found it
in only 12 (4.0%) of 300 cases of all congenital skeletal deficiencies
that they examined.
DISCUSSION
Because most (but not all) of these cases develop among persons who
believe in reincarnation, we should expect that the informants for the
cases would interpret them as examples according with their belief; and
they usually do. It is necessary, however, for scientists to think of
alternative explanations.
The most obvious explanation of these cases attributes the birthmark or
birth defect on the child to chance, and the reports of the child's
statements and unusual behaviour then become a parental fiction intended
to account for the birthmark (or birth defect) in terms of the culturally
accepted belief in reincarnation. There are, however, important objections
to this explanation. First, the parents (and other adults concerned in a
case) have no need to invent and narrate details of a previous life in
order to explain their child's lesion. Believing in reincarnation, as most
of them do, they are nearly always content to attribute the lesion to some
event of a previous life without searching for a particular life with
matching details. Second, the lives of the deceased persons figuring in
the cases were of uneven quality both as to social status and commendable
conduct. A few of them provided models of heroism or some other enviable
quality; but many of them lived in poverty or were otherwise unexemplary.
Few parents would impose an identification with such persons on their
children. Third, although in most cases the two families concerned were
acquainted (or even related), I am confident that in at least 13 cases
(among 210 carefully examined with regard to this matter) the two families
concerned had never even heard about each other before the case developed.
The subject's family in these cases can have had no information with which
to build up an imaginary previous life which, it later turned out, closely
matched a real one. In another 12 cases the child's parents had heard
about the death of the person concerned, but had no knowledge of the
wounds on that person. Limitations of space for this article oblige me to
ask readers to accept my appraisal of these 25 cases for this matter; but
in my forthcoming work I give a list of the cases from which readers can
find the detailed reports of the cases and from reading them judge this
important question for themselves. Fourth, I think I have shown that
chance is an improbable interpretation for the correspondences in location
between two or more birthmarks on the subject of a case and wounds on a
deceased person.
Persons who reject the explanation of chance combined with a secondarily
confected history may consider other interpretations that include
paranormal processes, but fall short of proposing a life after death. One
of these supposes that the birthmark or birth defect occurs by chance and
the subject then by telepathy learns about a deceased person who had a
similar lesion and develops an identification with that person. The
children subjects of these cases, however, never show paranormal powers of
the magnitude required to explain the apparent memories in contexts
outside of their seeming memories.
Another explanation, which would leave less to chance in the production of
the child's lesion, attributes it to a maternal impression on the part of
the child's mother. According to this idea, a pregnant woman, having a
knowledge of the deceased person's wounds, might influence a gestating
embryo and foetus so that its form corresponded to the wounds on the
deceased person. The idea of maternal impressions, popular in preceding
centuries and up to the first decades of this one, has fallen into
disrepute. Until my own recent article (Stevenson, 1992) there had been no
review of series of cases since 1890 (Dabney, 1890); and cases are rarely
published now (Williams and Pembroke, 1988). Nevertheless, some of the
published cases -- old and new -- show a remarkable correspondence between
an unusual stimulus in the mind of a pregnant woman and an unusual
birthmark or birth defect in her later-born child. Also, in an analysis of
113 published cases I found that the stimulus occurred to the mother in
the first trimester in 80 cases (Stevenson, 1992). The first trimester is
well known to be the one of greatest sensitivity of the embryo/foetus to
recognized teratogens, such as thalidomide (Nowack, 1965) and rubella
(Hill, Doll, Galloway, and Hughes, 1958). Applied to the present cases,
however, the theory of maternal impression has obstacles as great as the
normal explanation appears to have. First, in the 25 cases mentioned
above, the subject's mother, although she may have heard of the death of
the concerned deceased person, had no knowledge of that person's wounds.
Second, this interpretation supposes that the mother not only modified the
body of her unborn child with her thoughts, but after the child's birth
influenced it to make statements and show behaviour that it otherwise
would not have done. No motive for such conduct can be discerned in most
of the mothers (or fathers) of these subjects.
It is not my purpose to impose any interpretation of these cases on the
readers of this article. Nor would I expect any reader to reach even a
preliminary conclusion from the short summaries of cases that the brevity
of this report entails. Instead, I hope that I have stimulated readers to
examine the detailed reports of many cases that I am now in the process of
publishing (Stevenson, forthcoming). "Originality and truth are found only
in the details" (Stendhal, 1926).
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Drs. Antonia Mills and Emily W. Cook for critical
comments on drafts of this paper. Thanks are also due to the Bernstein
Brothers Parapsychology and Health Foundation for the support of my
research.
Correspondence and requests for reprints should be addressed to: Ian
Stevenson, M.D., Division of Perceptual Studies, Box 152, Health Sciences
Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908
REFERENCES
Cockayne, E, A. (1933). Inherited abnormalities of the skin. London:
Oxford University Press.
Cook, E. W., Pasricha, S, Samararatne, G, Win Maung, & Stevenson, I.
(1983). Review and analysis of "unsolved" cases of the reincarnation type:
II. Comparison of features of solved and unsolved cases, Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research, 77, 1 15-135.
Dabney, W. C. (1890). Maternal impressions. In J. M. Keating (Ed.),
Cyclopaedia of the diseases of children, Vol. 1 , (pp. 191-216).
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
Denaro, S. J. ( 1944). The inheritance of nevi. Journal of Heredity, 35, 2
1 5- 1 8.
Fatteh, A. (1976). Medicolegal investigation ofgunshor wounds.
Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
Frantz, C. H., & O'Rahilly, R.(1961). Congenital skeletal limb
deficiencies. Journal ofBone and Joins Surgerq: 43-A, 1202-24.
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