LAWS OF THE FERTILITY OF WOMEN. 313 



probable, because they bring the laws of length and weight of children, according 

 to the mother's age, into agreement with the law of intensity of fertility here 

 demonstrated. 



Chapter XI. — The Fertility of Elderly Women. 



So ardently did Sadler desire the triumph of his attack on Malthus, that he 

 adopted the dream of Mason Good, who says, " that the usual term (of cessation 

 of the menses) is between 40 and 50, except where women marry late in life, in 

 which case, from the postponement of the generative orgasm, they will occasion- 

 ally breed beyond their fiftieth year" ! ! * Mason Good refers to some extraordi- 

 nary cases of pregnancy in old women, curiosities in physiology, but he adduces 

 no good evidence in favour of the doctrine he here propounds. An opposite doc- 

 trine is taught by Burns, an author equally celebrated, and much more worthy 

 of confidence in a question of the kind now before us " It is well known," says 

 the Glasgow Professor,! " that women can only bear children until a certain age, 

 after which the uterus is no longer capable of performing the action of gestation, 

 or of performing it properly. Now it is observable, that this incapability or im- 

 perfection takes place sooner in those who are advanced in life before they marry, 

 than in those who have married and began to bear children earlier. Thus we 

 find, that a woman who marries at forty shall be very apt to miscarry, whereas 

 had she married at thirty, she might have born children when older than forty ; 

 from which it may be inferred, that the organs of generation lose their power of 

 acting properly sooner, if not employed, than in the connubial state. The same 

 cause which tends to induce abortion at a certain age, in those who have re- 

 mained until that time single, will also, at a period somewhat later, induce it in 

 those who have been younger married ; for in them we find that, after bearing 

 several children, it is not uncommon to conclude with an abortion ; or sometimes 

 after this incomplete action, the uterus, in a considerable time, recruits, as it 

 were, and the woman carries a child to the full time, after which she ceases to 

 conceive." My own opinion has always coincided with that so well expressed 

 by Burns ; and I may add, that the curious observations regarding abortion at 

 the close of the fertile period of life has its analogue in the lower animals. Several 

 times I have been told by men of experience, that an old bitch often ends her 

 career of breeding by a dead and premature pup. Whitehead also J regards 

 those pregnancies which occur near the termination of the fruitful period in women 

 as being among the most commonly unsuccessful. 



In Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1855, 53 women above the age of 45 bore living 



* The Study of Medicine. 1822. Vol. iv. p. 63. 

 f Principles of Midwifery. Tenth Edition, p. 309. 

 \ On Abortion and Sterility, p. 247. 



