_Quickening._ This leads us to the subject of quickening as a symptom of pregnancy. The very vagueness of the term _quickening_ is of itself a sufficient objection to its use as a source of information on these points. Strictly speaking, it refers to that moment of pregnancy when the woman is supposed to have become _quick with child_, or in other words, when the foetus becomes endued with life, "an error," as Dr. Montgomery observes, "which the continued use of the term was obviously calculated to foster and to prolong" (p. 75.) As far as we can understand, the word "quickening" at the present day refers to two different events during pregnancy: the one is when the motion of the child first becomes perceptible to the mother; the other consists of those effects which are frequently observed when the uterus quits the pelvis, and rises into the abdominal cavity, viz. fainting, sickness, &c.; in either case it will be evident that no correct conclusion can be formed by this means. It may safely be asserted that until the last twenty years we possessed only three diagnostic marks of pregnancy, viz. the appearance of the areola, a series of changes but little understood; the being able to feel the movements of the child through the abdominal parietes, and the head of it per vaginam. Hence Dr. W. Hunter in describing the uncertainty of the signs of pregnancy says, "I find I cannot determine at four months, I am afraid of myself at five months, but when six or seven months are over, I urge an examination." In the primipara, the changes which pregnancy produces upon the os and cervix uteri are generally sufficient to lead to an accurate conclusion. The round dimple-like depression which the os uteri forms, the soft cushiony state of the cervix, are changes which we consider as peculiarly the effects of pregnancy, but their distinctness and certainty ceases when the patient has had several children; the irregular shape of the os uteri, its thickened edges, hard here and there, and the os tincæ, itself more or less open, the cervix scarcely, if at all, shortened, even at a late period of gestation, tend not a little to perplex the diagnosis furnished by this mode of examination; and where disease is complicated with pregnancy, the difficulty is greatly increased, and not unfrequently so much, that scarcely a single satisfactory point will be obtained.