These, as I have said, are conclusions that cannot be gainsaid, as they are based on facts; and that these facts are merely what ought, in the very nature of things, to occur, can readily enough be shown. 1. Nature does all her work, of whatever character it may be, in accordance with certain simple and general laws, any infringement of which must necessarily cause derangement, disaster, or ruin. In the present instance, it has been ascertained, by careful dissections and microscopic study, that the woman's general system, both as a whole and as regards each individual organ and its tissues, is slowly and gradually prepared for the great change which naturally occurs at the end of nine months' gestation; and that if this change is by any means prematurely induced, whether by accident or design, it finds the system unprepared. Not even do I except from this law the earlier months of pregnancy, when it is thought by so many that abortion can be brought on without any physical shock. During pregnancy all the vital energies of the mother are devoted to a single end: the protection and nourishment of the child. Such wise provision is made for its security, such intimate vascular connection is established between the fœtal circulation and the blood-vessels of the mother, that its premature rupture is usually attended by profuse hemorrhage, often fatal, often persistent to a greater or less degree for many months after the act has been completed, and always attended with more or less shock to the maternal system, even though the full effect of this is not noticed for years. In birth at the full period, it is found that what is called by pathologists fatty degeneration of the tissues, occurs both in the walls of the mother's womb, and in the placenta or after-birth, by which attachment is kept up with the child. This change, in all other instances a diseased process, is here an essential and healthy one. By it the occurrence of labor at its normal period is to a certain extent determined; by it is provision made against an inordinate discharge of blood during the separation and escape of the after-birth, and by it is the return of the uterus to the comparatively insignificant size, that is natural to it when unimpregnated, insured. Any deviation from this process at the full term, which prevents the whole chain of events now enumerated from being completed, lays the foundation of, and causes a wide range of uterine accidents and disease, displacements of various kinds, falling of the womb downwards or forwards or backwards, with the long list of neuralgic pains in the back, groins, thighs, and elsewhere that they occasion; constant and inordinate leucorrhœa; sympathetic attacks of ovarian irritation, running even into dropsy, &c., &c. These are only a portion of the results that might be enumerated.