Ourselves Unborn : An Embryologist's Essay on Man

Dr. George Washington Corner, one of the most eminent embryologists in the United States, has written in this book an account of what happens to man (and other mammals) before birth. Here is the latest knowledge in the possession of the embryologist, presented so that the layman can read it; the story of the miraculous change from a single cell to an organism two billion times its original size, ready to take its place in the open air of the outside world. Here is also the story of what is and what is not true in beliefs about prenatal shocks to the mother and their effects on the offspring, ranging from the myths of sights and foods to avoid to the all-too-true accounts of what a comparatively harmless virus can do to the embryo. This book in its complete outline of the vicissitudes of the prenatal cells is an important document for any member of the human race.

Dr. Corner, author of The Hormones in Human Reproduction, has been professor of anatomy at the University of California, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Rochester Medical School, where he was also curator of the medical library. Since 1940 he has been Director of the Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and Professor of Embryology in Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Ourselves Unborn is based on the Terry Lectures which Dr. Corner delivered at Yale University but includes much additional material.