Another bizarre and apparently abnormal feature of the reproductive processes receives explanation in the history of its evolution. The feature in question is the painfulness of childbirth. It is truly astonishing and singular to find a phenomenon essentially normal from the point of view of physiology accompanied by pain of so marked a character. No doubt other animals suffer during labour, but among the mammalia woman undergoes the severest pain. Observations made on several Europeans who have been brought to bed at an abnormally early age have shown that, contrary to all expectation, parturition was easy and the sequelæ normal.[106] Moreover, Dr. Dionij has stated his opinion that of two cases of a first childbirth at the ages respectively of fifteen and of forty years, he would prefer the earlier age. The daughters of the colonists in the Antilles were accustomed to marry at very early ages. In 1667 Du Tertre related that a young woman of that region had informed him that the birth of her first child took place when she was twelve years and a half of age, and that the process lasted no more than a quarter of an hour and had been painless. The missionary Beierlein practised for long in Madras, where marriages were very early, and found that parturition was much more easy than in Europe.[107] On the other hand, certain facts show that too young mothers are subject to a very heavy rate of mortality during childbirth, and soon after it. The most salient fact in this connection is furnished by Hassenstein, who has stated that the mortality of labour cases in Abyssinia is 30 per cent., and who has attributed this death-rate to the circumstance that marriage takes place before the body of the woman is sufficiently developed.[108] In British India the disadvantages of precocious marriage have been repeatedly urged; and in a petition relating to this subject, Dr. Mansell referred to the case of a woman of twelve years of age in whom parturition was interfered with by the undeveloped condition of the pelvis, so that the head of the child had to be destroyed. Matthews Duncan, the well-known English obstetrician, paid much attention to the mortality of labour cases, with the object of deciding the best age for marriage. He came to the conclusion that women from twenty to twenty-four years of age were best fitted for labour, that is to say, showed the lowest rate of mortality during labour or as a result of labour. He also showed that such women were most fertile, and that the development of the pelvic bones was completed at that period of life. Women who were of a lower or higher age showed a greater mortality rate in connection with childbirth.