owed by
the happiest results in such cases.

STERILITY.

Wives who never become mothers are said to be sterile or barren. This
condition is frequently a cause of much unhappiness. Fortune may favor
the married couple in every other respect, yet if she refuse to accord
the boon of even a single heir to heart and home, her smiles will bear
the aspect of frowns. It is then of some interest to inquire into the
causes of this condition, and how to prevent or remedy their operation.

Dr. Duncan, of Edinburgh, has shown, by elaborate research, that in
those wives who are destined to have children, there intervenes, on the
average, about seventeen months between the marriage ceremony and the
birth of the first child, and that the question whether a woman will be
sterile is decided in the first three years of married life. If she have
no children in that time, the chances are thirteen to one against her
ever having any. In those cases, therefore, in which the first three
years of married life are fruitless, it is highly desirable for those
wishing a family to ascertain whether or not the barrenness is dependent
upon any defective condition capable of relief.

The age of a wife at the time of marriage has much to do with the
expectation of children. As the age increases over twenty-five years,
the interval between the marriage and the birth of the first child is
lengthened. For it has been ascertained that not only are women most
fecund from twenty to twenty-four, but that they begin their career of
child-bearing sooner after marriage than their younger or elder sisters.
Early marriages (those before the age of twenty) are sometimes more
fruitful than late ones (those after twenty-four). The interesting
result has further been arrived at in England, that about one in
fourteen of all marriages of women between fifteen and nineteen are
without offspring; that wives married at ages from twenty to twenty-four
inclusive, are almost all fertile; and that after that age the chances
of having no children gradually increases with the greater age at the
time of marriage.

There are two kinds of sterility which are physiological, natural to all
women,--that of young girls before puberty, and that of women who are
past the epoch of the cessation of the menses. In some very rare cases,
conception takes place after cessation. In one published case, it
occurred nine months afterwards, and in another eighteen months. In some
very rare ca