314 THE FERTILITY OF WOMEN. 



children. Among these 53, only one was primiparous — her age was 49, and she 

 had only been one year married ; 2 bore second children, — 1 was aged 46 years, 

 and had been four years married — the other was aged 52 years, and had been 

 three years married ; 4 bore fourth children ; 4 bore fifth children ; 3 bore sixth 

 children ; 3 bore seventh children ; 6 bore eighth children ; 8 bore ninth children ; 

 7 bore tenth children ; 4 bore eleventh children ; 1 bore a twelfth child ; 4 bore 

 thirteenth children ; 2 bore fourteenth children ; 1 bore a fifteenth child ; 2 bore 

 sixteenth children; 1 bore a nineteenth child. In short, the great majority 

 of women child-bearing late in life are mothers of considerable families, not 

 women for whom a postponement of the generative orgasm has to be imagined, 

 a circumstance which destroys all shadow of ground for Mason Good's supposi- 

 tion. * 



This completes my remarks on the fertility of married women. But the 

 subject is susceptible of further interesting developments, by an inverted method 

 of proceeding, which I hope to carry out. 



It is evident that the conclusions arrived at in this paper, or others still more 

 definite, can alone form a sure basis for speculation in the great questions in 

 political economy regarding population, and the various means of increasing it, 

 or of retarding its excessive growth. And it is to be hoped that the promoters of 

 that science will avail themselves of information which Malthus, Sadler, and 

 their followers, evidently desired ardently to possess. In default of this infor- 

 mation, they have fallen into many manifest errors in their groping after truth. 



But it is not to the political economist alone that such information is valuable. 

 It will form an element in the guidance of social life, and will certainly greatly 

 contribute to the wisdom in council of the well-informed medical practitioner. 



* For other corroborative evidence, see Roberton, Physiology and Diseases of Women, p. 184. 



