6. A discharge of serous fluid mingled with blood from the vagina, called the _Lochia_, continues from five to thirty-five days after delivery: it differs from the common menstrual flux in being paler, but more particularly in its peculiar and characteristic sour odour; at first this discharge is decidedly sanious, but in a few days it becomes of a much paler and of a brownish, or a dirty green hue, so as to acquire the common term of _green waters_. In addition to these signs, _Michael Albertus_ mentions the hair falling off from the pubes as a sign of delivery; it is hardly necessary to caution the practitioner against relying upon any sign so extremely uncertain and precarious. Although the period during which the consecutive signs of delivery remain evident, will vary in each case, yet as a general position we must admit with _Zacchias_,[394] _Albert_, _Bohn_, _Foderé_, _Mahon_, and _Belloc_, that after ten or twelve days, they may become too obscure to afford unexceptionable evidence. This conclusion was sanctioned by the _arrêt_ of the parliament of Paris, in the case of a woman of Mantes accused of infanticide, who, in consequence of a conference with _Antoine Petit_ and _Louis_[395] was pronounced innocent, upon the ground of the woman not having been examined as to the fact of her delivery, until after the expiration of a month. The criminal department of the Seine acquitted a woman cook of the name of _Aimée Perdriat_, charged with the perpetration of a similar crime, and of whose guilt no reasonable doubt could be entertained, in consequence of the same defect in the medical testimony.[396] The relative value which each of the signs possesses, will be better appreciated after we have considered the diseases whose effects may resemble them; but as a general principle we are anxious to enforce the necessity of always considering the consecutive signs of parturition collectively, and not individually; under such circumstances the practitioner can never be betrayed into an erroneous conclusion; for, as _Professor Chaussier_ has remarked, “_no disease, or affection, besides parturition, can possibly produce the whole series of signs above described_.”