Rest during pregnancy is a very powerful agent in preventing premature birth.  Thus Dr. Sarraute-Lourie has compared 1,550 pregnant women at the Asile Michelet who rested before confinement with 1,550 women confined at the Hopital Lariboisiere who had enjoyed no such period of rest.  She found that the average duration of pregnancy was at least twenty days shorter in the latter group (Mme. Sarraute-Lourie, De l’Influence du Repos sur la Duree de la Gestation, These de Paris, 1899).

Leyboff has insisted on the absolute necessity of rest during pregnancy, as well for the sake of the woman herself as the burden she carries, and shows the evil results which follow when rest is neglected.  Railway traveling, horse-riding, bicycling, and sea-voyages are also, Leyboff believes, liable to be injurious to the course of pregnancy.  Leyboff recognizes the difficulties which procreating women are placed under by present industrial conditions, and concludes that “it is urgently necessary to prevent women, by law, from working during the last three months of pregnancy; that in every district there should be a maternity fund; that during this enforced rest a woman should receive the same salary as during work.”  He adds that the children of unmarried mothers should be cared for by the State, that there should be an eight-hours’ day for all workers, and that no children under sixteen should be allowed to work (E.  Leyboff, L’Hygiene de la Grossesse, These de Paris, 1905).

Perruc states that at least two months’ rest before confinement should be made compulsory, and that during this period the woman should receive an indemnity regulated by the State.  He is of opinion that it should take the form of compulsory assurance, to which the worker, the employer, and the State alike contributed (Perruc, Assistance aux Femmes Enceintes, These de Paris, 1905).

It is probable that during the earlier months of pregnancy, work, if not excessively heavy and exhausting, has little or no bad effect; thus Bacchimont (Documents pour servir a l’Histoire de la Puericulture Intra-uterine, These de Paris, 1898) found that, while there was a great gain in the weight of children of mothers who had rested for three months, there was no corresponding gain in the children of those mothers who had rested for longer periods.  It is during the last three months that freedom, repose, the cessation of the obligatory routine of employment become necessary.  This is the opinion of Pinard, the chief authority on this matter.  Many, however, fearing that economic and industrial conditions render so long a period of rest too difficult of practical attainment, are, with Clappier and G. Newman, content to demand two months as a minimum; Salvat only asks for one