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Of this important truth the Romans
were fully aware. To sit beside a pregnant woman or a patient under
medical treatment with clasped hands, says the grave Pliny, is to
cast a malignant spell over the person, and it is worse still if you
nurse your leg or legs with your clasped hands, or lay one leg over
the other. Such postures were regarded by the old Romans as a let
and hindrance to business of every sort, and at a council of war or
a meeting of magistrates, at prayers and sacrifices, no man was
suffered to cross his legs or clasp his hands. The stock instance of
the dreadful consequences that might flow from doing one or the
other was that of Alcmena, who travailed with Hercules for seven
days and seven nights, because the goddess Lucina sat in front of
the house with clasped hands and crossed legs, and the child could
not be born until the goddess had been beguiled into changing her
attitude. It is a Bulgarian superstition that if a pregnant woman is
in the habit of sitting with crossed legs, she will suffer much in
childbed.


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