the normal menstruation would be due.  It should be borne in mind also that abortion occurring at this period is quite dangerous to the mother’s future health, and also dangerous to life; so that at the first indication of abortion a physician should be called for this trouble, because it needs care, both to prevent it and to assist the woman to a successful ending when it is impossible to prevent it.  This is more dangerous to life than confinement at full term, and is apt to leave behind a tendency to recurrence at the same time in the future pregnancies, and also makes the woman liable to inflammatory conditions of the womb.

Causes.—­Abortion may be induced by many causes due to the mother, father, and child.  Among maternal causes may be mentioned any serious disease, especially fevers, when accompanied by a rash on the skin, such as smallpox, measles, scarlet fever.  It is hard for a pregnant woman to go through one of these diseases, without having an abortion.  Syphilis, tuberculosis, malaria, organic heart and kidney disease, diabetes, anemia, and systemic poisoning also are causes; nervous disturbances as shock, fright, sorrow, convulsions, chorea; mechanical causes, violent exercise, lifting, blows, falls, coughing, vomiting; local causes, as wrong position of the womb, inflammation of the womb, etc.; all are causes.

Causes.  Due to the Father.  Paternal.—­Syphilis, alcoholism, lead poisoning, excessive venery, extremes of youth or old age.

Foetal Causes.—­Disease of the after-birth, other parts, of cord, death of the foetus, placenta pravia, and yet many women are subjected to falls, blows, etc., who carry their child to full term.

[526 Mothers’ remedies]

Symptoms.—­These vary with the period of pregnancy where they occur.  In the earlier months the symptoms are those of profuse menstruation, sometimes accompanied by more pain perhaps than usual.  The ovum is then so small that it escapes notice.  In the profuse flow there may be unaccustomed clots of blood; when this trouble occurs later in pregnancy there are two constant symptoms which, together with the history of the case, render the diagnosis easy.  These prominent and constant symptoms are pain and bleeding.  The symptoms may be preceded by a bearing down feeling in the lower abdomen, with backache, frequent calls to pass urine, and a discharge from the vagina, that is a mixture of mucus and water.  After these symptoms last for a shorter or longer time, labor pains set in, the bleeding increases and the contents of the womb are discharged.  The ovum may be expelled whole when it looks like a huge blood clot, or it may be expelled partly and the membranes left behind; or the embryo (child) alone, surrounded by the transparent membrane, escapes.