The term of utero-gestation is limited by nature to nine calendar months, or _forty weeks_, at the expiration of which, the process of labour usually commences; ingenious theorists have endeavoured to discover the principle of the expulsatory action of the uterus, and to assign the reason of its taking place at a stated period, but after all the subtle ingenuity which has been displayed upon this occasion, it is doubtful whether we are prepared with a better solution of the problem than that furnished by the physiologist in the time of _Avicenna_, who declared that labour came on at the appointed season, _by the command of GOD_. We shall therefore pass over the question without farther discussion, and proceed to the investigation of those practical parts of the subject, which are highly interesting on account of their numerous and important relations to medical jurisprudence; we propose, therefore, to discuss the following questions in succession: 1. Whether a woman can be delivered during a state of insensibility, and remain unconscious of the event? 2. How far the term of utero-gestation can be shortened, to be compatible with the life of the offspring? 3. Whether to any, and to what probable or possible extent, the natural term of utero-gestation can be protracted? 4. What is the value of those signs by which we seek to establish the fact of a recent delivery? 5. Are there any, and what diseases, whose effects may be mistaken for the traces of a recent delivery? 6. Can we determine by any signs, whether a woman has ever borne a child, although at a period remote from that of the examination? 7. What are the earliest and latest periods of life at which women are capable of child-bearing? 8. What is the possible number of children that may be produced at one birth? 9. Is _Superfœtation_ possible, and under what circumstances, and at what period of gestation can a second conception take place? 10. What are the causes of _Abortion_? 11. Under what circumstances, and by what means, is it _morally_, _legally_, and _medically_ proper, to induce premature _labour_? 12. What circumstances will justify the _Cæsarean operation_, and of what value is the section of the Symphysis Pubis, or _Sigaultian_ operation? Q. 1. _Whether a woman can be delivered during a state of insensibility, and remain unconscious of the event?_