Some ten years since, this matter was thoroughly taken in hand by a physician much interested in the diseases of women, the younger Dr. Storer, of Boston, with the frank acknowledgment that it was to his father, the Professor of Midwifery in Harvard University, that the credit of initiating the anti-abortion movement in New England was justly due. Prof. Hodge, of Philadelphia, like the elder Dr. Storer, had previously commented, in a public lecture to his class, afterwards printed, upon the immorality and frequency of induced miscarriage; and in Europe one or two physicians of eminence, as Dr. Radford, had endeavored to arouse the profession to the real value of fœtal life. The subject had also received some slight attention in works upon medical jurisprudence, but in special treatises upon abortion and sterility, their causes and treatment, of which the most celebrated has been that of Dr. Whitehead, of England, the chance of this occurrence and condition being dependent upon a criminal origin had been almost entirely lost sight of. In investigating the cases of disease in the better classes that came under observation, it was now ascertained that a very large proportion of them were directly owing to a previous abortion, and that in many of them this occurrence had been intentional; the physician's consultation room proving in reality a confessional, wherein, under the implied pledge of secrecy and inviolate confidence, the most weighty and at times astounding revelations are daily made. In such instances as those to which we are now referring, the disclosures are in answer to no idle curiosity, but to the necessity which always exists of knowing and understanding every point relating to the causation, the treatment, the cure of obscure disease. The profession were soon aroused to an appreciation of facts, whose existence it was shown could so easily be proved by every physician, and in 1857 a Committee, consisting of some of the more prominent and most reliable practitioners in various parts of the country, with the younger Storer as Chairman, was appointed by the American Medical Association, at its meeting in Nashville, to investigate the crime with a view to its possible suppression.[3] The report of this Committee was rendered at Louisville, in 1859, and, supported as it was by a mass of evidence of almost boundless scope, the measures proposed, chiefly of a legislative character, were unanimously indorsed by the Association. The evidence upon which the report was based was subsequently published at Philadelphia, as a separate volume, "the first of a series of contributions to Obstetric Jurisprudence" by its writer, under the title of "Criminal Abortion in America," and was feelingly dedicated "to those whom it may concern--Physician, Attorney, Juror, Judge, and Parent."