function has ever been
before. The gravity of the process has increased proportionately with
the worth of the product.

There are yet further consequences of the development which will
convince us how important it is that we should come to right conclusions
regarding the physical fitness of girls for marriage. Even to-day, when
the work of Lord Lister has been done, and when maternity hospitals--far
more dangerous than a battlefield less than two generations ago--can
show records from year to year without the loss of a single mother, the
fact remains that several thousands of women in Great Britain alone lose
their lives every year in the discharge of their supreme duty. It is
also the case that large numbers of infants lose their lives during, or
shortly after, birth, owing to causes inherent in the conditions of
birth, and practically beyond any but the most expert control. In many
cases no skill will save the child. A considerable preponderance of the
victims are of the male sex, so that there is thus early begun that
process of higher male mortality, which is the chief cause of the female
preponderance that is so injurious to womanhood and to society. There
are thus many and weighty reasons, individual and social--reasons in the
present generation and in the next--which conduce to the importance of
discovering the best age for marriage from the physical point of view.

We may probably accept the long-standing figures of Dr. Matthews Duncan,
one of Edinburgh's many famous obstetricians, who found that the
mortality rate in childbirth, or as a consequence of it, was lowest
among women from twenty to twenty-four years of age. Therefore it may
safely be said that, on the average, and looking at the question, for
the present, solely from this point of view, a girl of twenty-one to
twenty-two is by no means too young to marry. Of course it would be
monstrously absurd to take such a statement as this and regard it as
conclusive, even had it been communicated from on high, for any
particular case; but as an average statement it may be confidently put
forward. At this age, the all-important bones of the pelvis have reached
all the development of which they are capable. This may be accepted,
notwithstanding the fact that, especially in men, the growth of the long
bones of the limbs continues to a considerably later age. Women reach
maturity sooner than men, and the pelvis reaches its full capacity at
the age stated. Obstetri