SOME ASPECTS OF ABORTION. 349 



Upon contrasting the conditions in the small group of negro women, as revealed 

 in tables 18 to 22, with those in whites, one is not justified in drawing any definite 

 conclusion regarding the possibility of racial differences, because the group of negro 

 women is so small; but nevertheless it strikes one's attention that self-induction 

 of abortion is unrecorded among them. Psychic and accidental mechanical 

 causes also are unrecorded. Therapeutic intervention occurred in only 1.3 per 

 cent of the colored women, but in 6.6 per cent of the white. As shown in table 

 18, families with single children seem to be rarer among these negro women, but 

 the average number of children was less, a fact in agreement with the statement in 

 our last national census to the effect that, with the exception of the cities of Balti- 

 more and Washington, the average family among negroes in cities of a population 

 of 10,000 and over is somewhat smaller than that among whites. 



Abortions among the negro women also seemed to fall somewhat later in 

 gestation than among the white, only 65.4 per cent of them aborting before the 

 fifth month, as contrasted with 79.7 per cent of the white women. The negro 

 women, however, did not differ materially in age-grouping, as shown in table 22. 



Could one take the figures deduced from the records of specimens classed as 

 pathologic at their face value, one would be justified in concluding that but a very 

 small percentage of the abortions here concerned were due to interference on the 

 part of the patient. It also must be remembered that a smaller proportion of 

 abortuses classed as pathologic than of those grouped as normal probably result 

 from interference by the patient. This follows from the inference that a normal 

 gestation may be presumed to continue uninterrupted in its development far more 

 frequently than a pathologic one, a conclusion reached also by Giacomini and 

 by Mall. 



As shown in table 23, abortion was recorded as self-induced in approximately 

 34 per cent of 198 histories selected from the Carnegie Collection, in which other 

 causes than disease are mentioned. But these percentages do not truly represent 

 the situation, for such interference no doubt occurred in a far larger percentage of 

 cases, for the simple reason that physicians are disinclined to record and report, 

 and patients still more disinclined to state, such a fact. That the alleged causes 

 are not always the true ones is a matter of common knowledge. 



The interference was alleged to have been medicinal in only two of these cases. 

 In the rest it was said to have been mechanical. This was true of 68 out of 90 

 cases in which the termination of the gestation was alleged to have been due to 

 medicinal, accidental, or psychic causes or to mechanical interference on the part 

 of the patient. This is a percentage of 70.8. Associated diseases were mentioned 

 in only 54 out of 252 cases, or in 21.4 per cent. The abortion was recorded as 

 having been spontaneous in 2 cases only, although no cause was recorded in 463 

 of the 697 cases. Therapeutic abortions formed 24.7 per cent of those in which 

 a cause was assigned. 



A comparison of the part played by various alleged causes of abortion as 

 recorded in histories classed as normal and pathologic is given in table 24. What 

 particularly strikes one's attention is the fact that tumors and displacements of 



