It is generally imagined that the excessive action of the generative organs interferes with the power of procreation in common women. Dr. Lippert undertakes to controvert this opinion, with what success medical men whose professional experience has been among this class will be able to judge. He supports his views by general assertions rather than by specific facts, but refers, in corroboration, to well-known instances in which children have been born while the mothers were living in a state of open prostitution, as also to those cases where women who have abandoned the habit of promiscuous intercourse confine themselves to one man by marriage or cohabitation, and then become mothers. He attributes their sterility during prostitution to their wild and irregular life, their constant exposure to weather, etc., and argues that the powers of conception are suspended, but not destroyed thereby. He also introduces the fact that abortions are frequently produced in Hamburg by the common women themselves, or by some old crones who preside over their orgies, and are stated to have a long list of drugs applicable to this purpose, which they use in a reckless manner. The medical police are not unaware of these proceedings, but find them difficult to detect, as a woman will endeavor to avoid the stated examination by pleading excessive menstruation, or inventing some story she thinks likely to deceive, until all traces of the abortion are removed. The remarks of Dr. Lippert would lead to the belief that the _excessive use_ of the female organs was more favorable to health than the disuse would be, a conclusion which most physicians will not be willing to admit. He adds, "Cancer of the womb occurred but once in my experience of eleven years at the General Infirmary, and cases of prolapsus uteri are very rare." A disease incident to common women, _Colica scortorum_ (W----'s Colic), happens in Hamburg as elsewhere, but is attributed to exposure to the weather more than any other cause. It consists of pain in the womb, extending across the abdomen round to the loins, and sometimes including the whole region of the stomach. It is frequently accompanied with gastric derangement, sickness, or diarrhoea. The enlargement of the clitoris, so much insisted on by some writers, Lippert altogether doubts, except as a very exceptional case; nor does he admit any effect of prostitution on the rectum unless induced by unnatural intercourse. As a general result of his observations, he concludes that, "apart from syphilitic affections, the generative organs of a prostitute do not usually differ from those of a virtuous woman." We find some returns of diseases not directly connected with prostitution; thus, cases of itch, which is now becoming rare, were in 1836 62 1837 76 1838 87 1839 98 1844 38 1845 22 1846 36