sed
them from this condition of chafing discontent and brooding unrest. From
what source a knowledge of the ingredients requisite for the composition
of a pill for such a diabolical purpose was derived, or whether, indeed,
the pill was effective or diabolical at all, remains a mystery, inasmuch
as none of her medicine seems to have been subjected to chemical
analysis. Suffice to say that the couple rented a small room, and the
first advertisement of the female physician was printed in the old
_Sun_, and paid for with borrowed money.

Under such auspices the abortion business dawned upon this city, and in
more than one of the daily newspapers, between the years 1836 and 1840,
appeared glowing puffs of "the beautiful young female physician," as she
was termed, accompanied by elaborate advertisements setting forth her
specialty. No wonder this Upas tree flourished by the river of crime on
whose banks it was fed. No wonder that her brother Joseph, who had been
imported from madame's native English town, was kept busy in putting up
medicines and compounds for the ladies of New York. No wonder that the
Lohmans, _alias_ the Restells, waxed fat and insolent, or that, with
only thirty years actual existence, madame informed the public that she
had been for "thirty years physician in European hospitals"!

By and by her boldness attracted the attention of the Albany Solons, and
in 1846 a law was enacted which was intended to prevent the dark crime
which Madame Restell had helped to make so fashionable. In September,
1847, a minion of justice invaded her Gehenna, then at No. 146 Greenwich
street, and, upon an affidavit, she was arrested and put in prison. On
the tenth of that month she was arraigned and, pleading "Not guilty,"
was sent back to jail to await her trial. At this preliminary proceeding
it appeared that Dr. Samuel C. Smith had been called upon to attend
professionally a young woman of Orange County, by the name of Mary
Bodine, and, upon discovering evidences of foul play, communicated with
the Mayor of New York, and Madame Restell's arrest followed. Public
excitement rose to an intense pitch. A spasm of morality shook the city
to its foundations. Nothing was talked of but the hideous crimes of the
woman abortionist. People lost sight of the war, then raging in Mexico,
while listening to the stories of imaginative people about heaps of
babies' skulls supposed to be mouldering beneath the floors of the
Greenwich-street G