pregnancies; to these, the committee believe, may be added as many more that never came to the physician’s knowledge.  The committee further quoted, though without endorsement, the opinion of a physician who believed that a change is now coming over public feeling in regard to the abortionist, who is beginning to be regarded in America as a useful member of society, and even a benefactor.

In England, also, there appears to have been a marked increase of abortion during recent years, perhaps specially marked among the poor and hard-working classes.  A writer in the British Medical Journal (April 9, 1904, p. 865) finds that abortion is “wholesale and systematic,” and gives four cases occurring in his practice during four months, in which women either attempted to produce abortion, or requested him to do so; they were married women, usually with large families, and in delicate health, and were willing to endure any suffering, if they might be saved from further child-bearing.  Abortion is frequently effected, or attempted, by taking “Female Pills,” which contain small portions of lead, and are thus liable to produce very serious symptoms, whether or not they induce abortion.  Professor Arthur Hall, of Sheffield, who has especially studied this use of lead ("The Increasing Use of Lead as an Abortifacient,” British Medical Journal, March 18, 1905), finds that the practice has lately become very common in the English Midlands, and is gradually, it appears, widening its circle.  It occurs chiefly among married women with families, belonging to the working class, and it tends to become specially prevalent during periods of trade depression (cf.  G. Newman, Infant Mortality, p. 81).  Women of better social class resort to professional abortionists, and sometimes go over to Paris.

In France, also, and especially in Paris, there has been a great increase during recent years in the practice of abortion. (See e.g., a discussion at the Paris Societe de Medecine Legale, Archives d’Anthropologie Criminelle, May, 1907.) Doleris has shown (Bulletin de la Societe d’Obstetrique, Feb., 1905) that in the Paris Maternites the percentage of abortions in pregnancies doubled between 1898 and 1904, and Doleris estimates that about half of these abortions were artificially induced.  In France, abortion is mainly carried on by professional abortionists.  One of these, Mme. Thomas, who was condemned to penal servitude, in 1891, acknowledged performing 10,000 abortions during eight years; her charge for the operation was two francs and upwards.  She was a peasant’s daughter, brought up in the home of her uncle, a doctor, whose medical and obstetrical books she had devoured (A.  Hamon, La France en 1891, pp. 629-631).  French public opinion is lenient to abortion, especially to women who perform the operation on themselves; not many cases are brought into court, and of these,