The time at which menstruation, and consequently child-bearing ceases, will be materially influenced by that at which it commenced; with those who commenced at ten or twelve, the discharge often ceases before the age of forty; but where the first appearance has been protracted to sixteen or eighteen, such women may continue to menstruate until they have passed the fiftieth year; but in this climate the most usual period of cessation is between the age of forty-four and fifty,[403] after which women never bear children, although we have in ancient[404] as well as in modern times, many extraordinary examples of protracted fecundity, to which but little credit ought, in general, to be attached. _Marsa_, a Venetian physician, relates a case of a woman who at the age of sixty brought forth a daughter, and suckled her, and whom he had previously treated for what he had considered to be ovarian dropsy; the annals of our own country[405] would furnish some extraordinary instances of a similar kind. _Dr. Gordon Smith_ illustrates the subject by the case of the wife of a peruke-maker in Poland-street, in the year 1775, who at the age of fifty-four produced two sons and a daughter, although she had been married for thirty years, and had never before been pregnant. It is probable that many of those “well authenticated instances” of old women having menstruated, like those recorded of children, are merely sanguineous discharges from the vagina, or from a diseased uterus; this we have no doubt is the true explanation of the case related by _Richerand_,[406] of a woman, who at the age of seventy had not ceased to menstruate. Q. 8. _What is the possible number of Children that can be produced at one birth?_ According to the most accurate estimates, _Twin_ cases, on an average, occur about once in ninety labours; _Triplets_ are considerably more rare, they are stated not to take place more than once in three thousand times; and the occurrence of four at a birth is so rare an event, that no calculation has been formed upon the subject. The reader will find a very interesting paper on the “_Plurality of Births_,” by _Dr. Garthshore_, in the 77th volume of the Philosophical Transactions, to which we beg to refer him. _Dr. Osborne_ states that he has distinctly traced as many as six fœtuses in an abortion.