Emmenagogues, or acrid substances, such as savine and other irritating drugs, more especially those which tend to excite a considerable degree of vascular action, may produce abortion. Such medicines, likewise, as exert a violent action on the stomach or bowels will, upon the principle formerly mentioned, frequently excite abortion; and very often are taken designedly for that purpose in such quantity as to produce fatal effects; and here I must remark, that many people at least pretend to view attempts to excite abortion as different from murder, upon the principle that the embryo is not possessed of life, in the common acceptation of the word. It undoubtedly can neither think nor act; but, upon the same reasoning, we should conclude it to be innocent to kill the child in the birth. Whoever prevents life from continuing, until it arrive at perfection, is certainly as culpable as if he had taken it away after that had been accomplished. I do not, however, wish, from this observation, to be understood as in any way disapproving of those necessary attempts which are occasionally made to procure premature labour, or even abortion, when the safety of the mother demands this interference, or when we can thus give the child a chance of living, who otherwise would have none. If any part with which the uterus sympathizes have its action greatly increased during pregnancy, the uterus may come to suffer, and abortion be produced. Hence the accession of morbid action or inflammation in any important organ, or on a large extent of cuticular surface, may bring on miscarriage, which is one cause why smallpox often excites abortion, whilst the same degree of fever, unaccompanied with eruption, would not have had that effect. Hence also increased secretory action in the vagina, if to a great degree, though it may have even originally been excited in consequence of sympathy with the uterus, may come to incapacitate the uterus for going on with its actions, and therefore it ought to be checked by means of an astringent injection. In this case the uterus has, without any proof, been supposed to become too much relaxed, whilst in other cases, as for instance when the abdomen was harder than usual, it has with as little foundation been supposed to be preternaturally rigid.