It is not for me to
decide,' he says, 'whether the modern Cesarian section, Porro's
operation, symphysiotomy, ischiopubotomy, or other operation is the
safest or most suitable, nor yet is there sufficient material for this
question to be decided; but when such splendid and successful results
have been achieved by Porro, Leopold, Saenger, and by our own Murdoch
Cameron, I say it deliberately and with whatever authority I possess,
and I urge it with all the force I can master, that we are not now
justified in destroying a living child; and while there may be some
things I look back upon with pleasure in my professional career, that
which gives me the greatest satisfaction is that I have never done a
craniotomy on a living child.'"

You will please notice, gentlemen, that when this distinguished Doctor
said, "We are not _now_ justified in destroying a living child," he was
speaking from a medical standpoint, and meant to say that such
destruction is now scientifically unjustifiable, is a blunder in
surgery. From a moral point of view it is not only now, but it was
always, unjustifiable to slay a child as a means to save the mother's
life; a good end cannot justify an evil means, is a truth that cannot be
too emphatically inculcated. This is one of the most important subjects
on which Medical Jurisprudence has been improved, and most of its
text-books are deficient. The improvement is explained with much
scientific detail in an address of the President, Samuel C. Busey, M.D.,
before the Washington Obstetrical and Gynecological Society ("Am.
Journal of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children," vol. xvii.
n. 2).

LECTURE III.

ABORTION.

Abortion, gentlemen, is the theme of my present lecture.

I. An important point to be determined is the precise time when the
human embryo is first animated by its own specific principle of life,
its human soul. It is interesting to read what various conjectures have
been ventured on this subject by the learned of former ages. They were
totally at sea. Though gifted with keen minds, they had not the proper
data to reason from. And yet some of those sages made very shrewd
guesses. For instance, as early as the fourth century of our era,
St. Gregory of Nyssa taught the true doctrine, which modern science has
now universally accepted. He taught that the rational soul is created by
Almighty God and infused into the embryo at the very moment of
conception. Still, as St. Grego