age in women begins earlier (sometimes at eight), though it usually ceases by fifty, or earlier, in only rare cases continuing to sixty or beyond.  Cases have been reported of pregnancy, or childbirth, at the age of fifty-nine (e.g., Lancet, Aug. 5, 1905, p. 419).  Lepage (Comptes-rendus Societe d’Obstetrique de Paris, Oct., 1903) reports a case of a primipara of fifty-seven; the child was stillborn.  Kisch (Sexual Life of Woman, Part II) refers to cases of pregnancy in elderly women, and various references are given in British Medical Journal, Aug. 8, 1903, p. 325.

Of more importance is the question of early pregnancy.  Several investigators have devoted their attention to this question.  Thus, Spitta (in a Marburg Inaugural Dissertation, 1895) reviewed the clinical history of 260 labors in primiparae of 18 and under, as observed at the Marburg Maternity.  He found that the general health during pregnancy was not below the average of pregnant women, while the mortality of the child at birth and during the following weeks was not high, and the mortality of the mother was by no means high.  Picard (in a Paris thesis, 1903) has studied childbirth in thirty-eight mothers below the age of sixteen.  He found that, although the pelvis is certainly not yet fully developed in very young girls, the joints and bones are much more yielding than in the adult, so that parturition, far from being more difficult, is usually rapid and easy.  The process of labor itself, is essentially normal in these cases, and, even when abnormalities occur (low insertion of the placenta is a common anomaly) it is remarkable that the patients do not suffer from them in the way common among older women.  The average weight of the child was three kilogrammes, or about 6 pounds, 9 ounces; it sometimes required special care during the first few days after birth, perhaps because labor in these cases is sometimes slow.  The recovery of the mother was, in every case, absolutely normal, and the fact that these young mothers become pregnant again more readily than primiparae of a more mature age, further contributes to show that childbirth below the age of sixteen is in no way injurious to the mother.  Gache (Annales de Gynecologie et d’Obstetrique, Dec., 1904) has attended ninety-one labors of mothers under seventeen, in the Rawson Hospital, Buenos Ayres; they were of so-called Latin race, mostly Spanish or Italian.  Gache found that these young mothers were by no means more exposed than others to abortion or to other complications of pregnancy.  Except in four cases of slightly contracted pelvis, delivery was normal, though rather longer than in older primiparae.  Damage to the soft parts was, however, rare, and, when it occurred, in every case rapidly healed.  The average weight of the child was 3,039 grammes, or nearly 63/4 pounds.  It may be noted that most observers find that very early pregnancies occur in women who begin to menstruate at an unusually