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