s to
represent the first day of the last menstrual period, the figure
beneath it, with the month designated in the margin, will show the
probable date of confinement.

CHAPTER II

STORY OF THE UNBORN CHILD

To every physician in every community, sooner or later in his
experience there come thoughtless women making requests that we even
hesitate to write about. Their excuses for the crime which they seek
to have the physician join them in committing, range all the way from
"I don't want to go to the trouble," to "Doctor, I've got seven
children now, and I can't even educate and dress them properly;" or,
maybe, "I nearly lost my life with the last one."

EMBRYOLOGICAL IGNORANCE

One little woman came to us the other day from the suburbs, and
honestly, frankly, related this story:

"We've been married just six months, I have continued my stenographic
work to add the sixty-five dollars to our monthly income. Doctor, we
must meet our monthly payments on the home, I must continue to work,
or we shall utterly fail. I am perfectly willing a baby shall come to
us two years from now, but, doctor, I just can't allow this one to go
on, you must help me just this once. Why doctor, there can't be much
form or life there, it's only three months now, or will be next week,
and you know it's nothing but a mass of jelly."

She had talked with a "confidential friend" in her neighborhood, had
been told that she "could do it herself," but fearing trouble or
infection, had come to the conclusion she had better go to a "clean,
reputable physician," to have the abortion performed.

This is not the place to narrate the experiences of the unfortunate
victims of habitual criminal abortion, but we would like to impress
upon the reader some realization of the untimely deaths, the awful
suffering, and the life-long remorse and sorrow of the poor, misguided
women who listen to the criminal advice of neighborhood "busybodies."
The infections, the invalidism, the sterility that so often follow in
the wake of these practices, are well known to all medical people.

THE STREAM OF LIFE

And so after the patient's last statement, "It's nothing but a mass of
jelly," we began the simple but wonderfully beautiful story of the
development of the "child enmothered." Just as all vegetables, fruits,
nuts, flowers, and grains come from seeds sown into fertile soil, and
just as these seeds receive nourishment from the soil, rain, and
sunshin