The abuse and criminal extension of such a resource is reprehensible, but not its proper and authorized employment. This operation should always be undertaken with great care, and all necessary precaution used to satisfy the public mind of its necessity. LABOR, DELIVERY, ETC. After seven months of pregnancy the fœtus has all the conditions for breathing and exercising its digestion. It may then be separated from its mother, and change its mode of existence. Child-birth rarely, however, happens at this period: most frequently the fœtus remains two months longer in the uterus, and it does not pass out of this organ till after the revolution of nine months. Examples are related of children being born after ten full months of gestation; but these cases are very doubtful, for it is extremely difficult to know the exact period of conception. The legislation in France, however, has fixed the principle, that child-birth may take place up to the two hundred and ninety-ninth day of pregnancy. Nothing is more curious than the mechanism by which the fœtus is expelled; everything happens with wonderful precision; all seems to have been foreseen, and calculated to favor its passage through the pelvis and the genital parts. The physical causes that determine the exit of the fœtus are the contraction of the uterus and that of the abdominal muscles; by their force the liquor amnii flows out, the head of the fœtus is engaged in the pelvis, it goes through it, and soon passes out by the valve, the folds of which disappear; these different phenomena take place in succession, and continue a certain time; they are accompanied with pains more or less severe; with swelling and softening of the soft parts of the pelvis and external genital parts, and with an abundant mucous secretion in the cavity of the vagina. All these circumstances, each in its own way, favor the passage of the fœtus. To facilitate the study of this action, it may be divided into several periods. _The first period of child-birth._—It is constituted by the precursory signs. Two or three days before child-birth a flow of mucus takes place from the vagina, the external genital parts swell and become softer; it is the same with the ligaments that unite the bones of the pelvis; the mouth of the womb flattens, its opening is enlarged, its edges become thinner; slight pains, known under the name of _flying pains_, are felt in the loins and abdomen.