month’s rest before confinement, the woman, whether married or not, receiving a pecuniary indemnity during this period, with medical care and drugs free.  Ballantyne (Manual of Antenatal Pathology:  The Foetus, p. 475), as well as Niven, also asks only for one month’s compulsory rest during pregnancy, with indemnity.  Arthur Helme, however, taking a more comprehensive view of all the factors involved, concludes in a valuable paper on “The Unborn Child:  Its Care and Its Rights” (British Medical Journal, Aug. 24, 1907), “The important thing would be to prohibit pregnant women from going to work at all, and it is as important from the standpoint of the child that this prohibition should include the early as the late months of pregnancy.”

In England little progress has yet been made as regards this question of rest during pregnancy, even as regards the education of public opinion.  Sir William Sinclair, Professor of Obstetrics at the Victoria University of Manchester, has published (1907) A Plea for Establishing Municipal Maternity Homes.  Ballantyne, a great British authority on the embryology of the child, has published a “Plea for a Pre-Maternity Hospital” (British Medical Journal, April 6, 1901), has since given an important lecture on the subject (British Medical Journal, Jan. 11, 1908), and has further discussed the matter in his Manual of Ante-Natal Pathology:  The Foetus (Ch.  XXVII); he is, however, more interested in the establishment of hospitals for the diseases of pregnancy than in the wider and more fundamental question of rest for all pregnant women.  In England there are, indeed, a few institutions which receive unmarried women, with a record of good conduct, who are pregnant for the first time, for, as Bouchacourt remarks, ancient British prejudices are opposed to any mercy being shown to women who are recidivists in committing the crime of conception.

At present, indeed, it is only in France that the urgent need of rest during the latter months of pregnancy has been clearly realized, and any serious and official attempts made to provide for it.  In an interesting Paris thesis (De la Puericulture avant le Naissance, 1907) Clappier has brought together much information bearing on the efforts now being made to deal practically with this question.  There are many Asiles in Paris for pregnant women.  One of the best is the Asile Michelet, founded in 1893 by the Assistance Publique de Paris.  This is a sanatorium for pregnant women who have reached a period of seven and a half months.  It is nominally restricted to the admission of French women who have been domiciled for a year in Paris, but, in practice, it appears that women from all parts of France are received.  They are employed in light and occasional work for the institution, being paid for this work, and are also occupied in making clothes for the expected baby.  Married and unmarried women