A similar custom is widespread in India, being quite as common among the Hindoos who are ruled by England as among independent races. In the peninsula of Kutch, women frequently procure abortion, and one woman boasted to Macmurdo that she had made use of the practice five times. Abortion is equally common in Africa and America. Even in Europe there are nations amongst which abortion is permitted within certain limits. The Turks do not regard a fœtus as being really alive until after the fifth month, and have no scruple in causing its abortion. Even at later stages, when the operation becomes criminal, it is frequently practised. In 1872, at Constantinople, more than three thousand cases of abortion were brought before the Courts in a period of ten months. Under such circumstances it is not surprising that illegitimate children are rare in the East. Artificial abortion is not a modern invention, but was common in ancient times. The old Greeks practised it openly, without any legal restraint. Plato regarded it as within the province of the midwife, and Aristotle permitted it to married people when a pregnancy that was not desired took place. Steller, writing of the natives of Kamchatka of the eighteenth century, stated that among them marriage was contracted rather for sensual gratification than for the procreation of children, because they interfered with pregnancies by various kinds of medicaments and by violent operative interferences. The arts by which abortion has been produced are numerous and varied. In addition to the administration of drugs, chiefly of vegetable origin, implements have been employed. The natives of Greenland use the ribs of seals or of the walrus, and the Hawaians of the Sandwich Islands employ for the purpose a wooden implement fashioned as a deity. On the other hand, certain races have strongly opposed the practice of abortion. In the ancient world such races were the Medes, the Bactrians, the Persians, and Jews. Among the ancient Incas, abortion was a crime punished with death. Later on, the Christian nations followed this view. However, the reprobation of abortion occurs only in a comparatively small number of the nations of the earth, and even amongst these the practice is common in secret.