When the fœtus is prematurely expelled before it can survive, it is called an _Abortion_, but if its expulsion take place so late that it can live, it is called _Miscarriage_. Both these are serious accidents. In abortion the child is lost, as a matter of course, but in miscarriage it may live, after the seventh month. The danger to the mother is considerable from both, though greatest probably from abortion. It is probable that many very early miscarriages take place unperceived, the female suffering but little from the accident, and the embryo being too small to be seen, unless carefully looked for. The most frequent periods for such accidents are found to be six months, five months, and three months; and what is very singular, a much greater number of male children are aborted than females, the proportion being about sixteen to eleven. These accidents are so intimately connected with flooding, that many writers always treat of them together, considering the flooding merely as the most frequent cause and symptom of miscarriage or abortion. In speaking therefore of the immediate causes of premature expulsion of the fœtus, we place hemorrhage first, and the causes before enumerated which produce that as being its most frequent remote ones. A full habit, with tendency to local congestion, seems to predispose a female very much to miscarriage; every one so constituted should carefully avoid luxurious living and an inactive life. Violent bodily exertion, falls, or blows, or strong mental excitement are most usually the immediate causes, though with some it will come on spontaneously without any such exciting agencies. Some females will miscarry many times in succession, and always so near the same period, that they can tell to a day or two when it will happen. It seems to become a habit of the womb with them to contract at that particular time, and the only way to break through the _habit_ is for them to avoid becoming pregnant for some considerable time, say two or three years after, they may then go the full time, but will seldom do so if they conceive immediately after having miscarried. In some persons miscarriage is caused by a _too eager_ gratification of certain desires; but in others it may arise _from the opposite cause_. There is a disease of the womb also by no means unfrequent, though but little understood, which undoubtedly causes much miscarriage, and that is _Rheumatism of the Womb_! This mostly exists before the pregnancy however, and should be then treated according to the plan laid down in my "Diseases of Woman."