You will please notice, gentlemen, that when this distinguished Doctor said, "We are not _now_ justified in destroying a living child," he was speaking from a medical standpoint, and meant to say that such destruction is now scientifically unjustifiable, is a blunder in surgery. From a moral point of view it is not only now, but it was always, unjustifiable to slay a child as a means to save the mother's life; a good end cannot justify an evil means, is a truth that cannot be too emphatically inculcated. This is one of the most important subjects on which Medical Jurisprudence has been improved, and most of its text-books are deficient. The improvement is explained with much scientific detail in an address of the President, Samuel C. Busey, M.D., before the Washington Obstetrical and Gynecological Society ("Am. Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children," vol. xvii. n. 2). LECTURE III. ABORTION. Abortion, gentlemen, is the theme of my present lecture. I. An important point to be determined is the precise time when the human embryo is first animated by its own specific principle of life, its human soul. It is interesting to read what various conjectures have been ventured on this subject by the learned of former ages. They were totally at sea. Though gifted with keen minds, they had not the proper data to reason from. And yet some of those sages made very shrewd guesses. For instance, as early as the fourth century of our era, St. Gregory of Nyssa taught the true doctrine, which modern science has now universally accepted. He taught that the rational soul is created by Almighty God and infused into the embryo at the very moment of conception. Still, as St. Gregory could not prove the certainty of his doctrine, it was opposed by the majority of the learned. The Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, while condemning abortion from the time of conception, preferred the opinion of Aristotle, that the rational soul is not infused till the fœtus is sufficiently developed to receive it. The embryo lived first, they taught, with a vegetable life; after a few days an animal soul replaced the vegetative principle; the human soul was not infused into the tiny body till the fortieth day for a male, and the eightieth day for a female child. All this sounds very foolish now; and yet we should not sneer at their ignorance; had we lived in their times, we could probably have done no better than they.