In cases where the children die at a particular time before term, premature labor should be induced to save the child, and when the child has been carried over term it may be necessary to induce labor. In the first condition labor is not to be induced a week earlier than is necessary. We talk so much of a seven months' child as viable that we forget that any child born before the thirtieth week of gestation has very small chance for survival. From 30 to 60 per cent. of all prematurely delivered infants die. The maternal passages do not dilate normally and the child is unformed; its bones fracture readily; it cannot sustain pressures and strains. All induced labors are dangerous to the mother by shock and possible infection, and only very grave necessity justifies any such procedure. In inducing necessary premature labor the technical method may take on a moral quality. There are over a score of methods, and many of these, although used, are dangerous and should be obsolete. A very common method, begun in 1855, is to insert one or two elastic solid bougies into the uterus between the membranes and the uterine wall. This is a dangerous method and should be obsolete. Other dangerous and obsolete methods are the puncture of the membranes with a trocar high up in the uterus; intrauterine injections of hot or cold water, glycerine, milk, and other liquids; vaginal tamponade alone; irrigation of the vagina with carbon-dioxide water; a stream of hot water directed against the cervix, electricity, X-ray, dilatation of the vagina with a rubber bag, irritation of the nipples, the use of drugs like quinine, cimicifuga, ergot, or cantharides. If haste is not necessary, packing the cervical canal and the lower uterine segment antiseptically with a strip of gauze three to five yards long and three inches wide and leaving it in for about twenty-four hours is one of the best methods. Where rapid delivery is required, cesarean section must be employed. In cases of somewhat less urgency the membranes are first punctured and balloon dilators are used. In any case puncture of the membranes is the most certain method to start labor, but it has many bad disadvantages. A dry labor in a primipara with an undilated cervix is a grave condition. If the fetal head is not engaged in the pelvis, puncture must not be attempted. When the head is not engaged in the pelvis like a ball-valve, the cord will prolapse, be pinched, and thus the blood supply will be cut off from the child and the loss will kill it. For the same reason, the waters must not be run off too quickly. Many operators insert a bag, dilate, and so start the labor, without puncturing the membranes, where there is no reason for haste.