At this eventful period, when the fountains of youth dry up, and the scanty circulation is turned from its accustomed channel, the woman ceases from the periodical discharges, which in health and with care are the secret of her beauty, her attractions, her charms. At its occurrence not merely is a change produced in the system generally, but the womb, no longer required, becomes atrophied and dwindles into insignificance. It may have had impressed upon it, years and years back, the stamp of derangement, till now not rendered effective; for, as in other portions of the body, a part once weakened may retain itself in tolerably good condition until some accident or other change develops or awakens the seed of disease. Thus it is that an ancient hypertrophy, or a chronic irritation, may become scirrhous and degenerate into undoubted carcinoma, or chronic menorrhagia or uterine leucorrhœa become intractable hemorrhage, or a latent fibroid deposit develop into an irrepressible, and, perhaps, irremediable tumor. Little the comfort for a woman to have had her own way against the dictates of her conscience, the advice, perhaps, of her physician, if to the dangers she must directly incur, she must add the looking forward through all the rest of her life to possible disease, invalidism or death as the direct consequence of her folly; no wonder if she should consider prevention better than such cure as this, and yet the prevention of pregnancy, by whatever means it may be sought, by cold vaginal injections, or by incomplete or impeded sexual intercourse, is alike destructive to sensual enjoyment and to the woman's health; her only safeguard is either to restrict approach to a portion of the menstrual interval, or to refrain from it altogether. Not merely are certain of the measures to which I have alluded detrimental to the health of the woman, they are so to both parties engaged, and it is to their frequent employment, freely confessed as this is to the physician, that much of the ill health of the community, both of men and women is to be attributed. Though they may seem sanctioned by the rites of marriage, they are in some respects worse for the physical health, I might almost say for the moral health likewise, than illicit intercourse or even prostitution, for they bring both parties down to all the evils and dangers, mental and physical, of self-abuse. V.--_The Frequency of Forced Abortions, even among the Married._ All are familiar with the fact, to be perceived everywhere upon the most casual scrutiny, that the standard size of families is not on the average what used to be seen; in other words, that instances of an excess over three or four children are not nearly as common as we know was the case a generation or two back. No one supposes that men or women have, as a whole, so deteriorated in procreative ability as this might otherwise seem to imply.