64 



On Abortion in Coivs. 



and when it is so minute and cellular in structure as to be bardly 

 observable by the naked eye. It may also take place when the 

 embryo, or first rudimentary animal outline, is barely recognised 

 among the contents of the uterus, and it may be deferred till the 

 various organs and members of the fcetal body have attained more 

 perfect development. In the human female, if this expulsion 

 take place during the first sixteen weeks of gestation, it is called 

 abortion ; if between the sixteenth and twenty-eighth week, it is 

 termed miscarriage ; if between the twenty-eighth week and the 

 full period, it is considered premature labour. This distinction 

 in terms is not observed in reference to the lower animals. 



Extent of the Prevalence of Abortion. — From various inquiries 

 which have been made, and from the statements of travellers and 

 other persons competent to speak on the subject, it seems that 

 among the vast herds of wild cattle inhabiting large tracts of 

 country on the continents of the old and new w^orld, abortion is 

 unknown. In those mountainous districts of our own country 

 which we have visited, more especially in Wales and Scotland, 

 where small black cattle (although domesticated) are less arti- 

 ficially treated than the cows of richer districts in other parts of 

 the kingdom, abortion, except as an accidental circumstance, is 

 almost unheard of. It is also interesting to notice, that the preg- 

 nant human female, although exposed to the apparent hardships 

 and discomfort of a savage life, is very rarely subject to abortion. 

 Women, too, in our own and other countries, in the lower ranks 

 of civilized society, are, on the whole, infinitely less liable to 

 abortion than those of their sex who participate fully in the 

 luxuries and artificial refinements of life. These facts are of great 

 interest, and, as we shall presently find, although they do not prove 

 what the causes of abortion are, yet, on the other hand, they 

 instructively show (what is of great value in medical evidence) 

 that while one class of animals is exempt from the operation of the 

 causes in question, we must expect to find that such causes act, 

 and are to be found in special connection with some peculiar 

 conditions under which the affected animals are placed. 



With the exception of the human female, there is not any 

 other animal so subject to abortion as the cow. In some seasons, 

 more especially during a wet autumn, or in the early months of 

 spring, it is of such extensive prevalence among large stocks of 

 cattle as fairly to be considered an epizootic disease. The dairy 

 counties of England and Scotland have occasionally afforded 

 striking illustrations of this fact, as cows over large districts of 

 country have cast their calves without the apparent existence of 

 any visible cause. At other times there seems a singular indis- 

 position in cows to conceive (or "hold to the bull"), and the 

 oestrum or heat continues to recur each three weeks or month 

 during the season. Various continental authors supply us with 



