Mr. Alison mentions the case of one Catharine Butler, or Anderson, of Aberdeen, Scotland, who in the spring of 1829, walked in two or three days after delivery, in a single day, with her child on her back, from Inverury to Huntly, a distance of twenty-eight miles; and the same author also remarks, “that it is not unusual to find women engaged in reaping, retire to a little distance, effect their delivery by themselves, return to their fellow-laborers, and go on with their work during the remainder of the day, without any change of appearance but looking a little paler and thinner. Such a fact,” Mr. Alison observes, “occurred in the case of Jean Smith, of Ayr, in the spring of 1824.” Among the peasant women of the mountains in Austrian Silesia, childbirth is regarded in a very different light from that among the women of our own country. They are exceedingly hardy and robust, and seem to care as little about giving birth to a child as if it were an everyday occurrence. Physicians are very rarely employed on such occasions in that country, as I learned when there by frequent inquiries. In the winter of 1848, when I was last at Graefenberg, the wife of the proprietor of the _Hotel de Graefenberg_, a very good and worthy woman, of the middling class, gave birth to her first child, without the aid of any one save her husband and a female attendant; and, although the labor was a severe and protracted one, lasting a day and a half, she preferred to have no physician, although one of skill and experience lived next door to them, and who was, moreover, a particular friend of the parties. These German peasants appear to regard labor as it should be, a _natural process_, and the degree of patience for which the German character is noted, is nowhere more strikingly exemplified than in the matter of childbirth. Witnessing, then, the great numbers of facts that may be gleaned from the history of savage and civilized nations, concerning the safety with which childbirth and its attending circumstances may be endured by persons in the lower walks of life, it becomes a very important practical question as to what may be accomplished in the higher grades of society. To prove that there is need of a great and thorough reform, both in the habits of society generally, and in the practice of the healing art, I will bring forward some facts, which have occurred in my own experience as a healer of the sick during the past seven years. It has fallen to my lot to study the subject of midwifery with more earnestness and satisfaction to myself, than any other with which my mind has been engaged. It was, moreover, necessary for me to strike out a course of my own, a course which has been attended by a degree of success which has far exceeded the most sanguine expectations of my younger years. LETTER II. OF MENSTRUATION. Puberty—The Menstrual Discharge—The Marriageable Age.