pose and
non-repose is thus considerable, while it also enables robust
women exercising a fatiguing occupation to catch up, though not
to surpass, the frailer women exercising a less fatiguing
occupation. We see, too, that even in the comparatively
unfatiguing occupations of milliners, etc., rest during pregnancy
still remains important, and cannot safely be dispensed with.
"Society," Letourneux concludes, "must guarantee rest to women
not well off during a part of pregnancy. It will be repaid the
cost of doing so by the increased vigor of the children thus
produced" (Letourneux, _De l'Influence de la Profession de la
Mere sur le Poids de l'Enfant_, These de Paris, 1897).

Dr. Dweira-Bernson (_Revue Pratique d'Obstetrique et de
Pediatrie_, 1903, p. 370), compared four groups of pregnant women
(servants with light work, servants with heavy work, farm girls,
dressmakers) who rested for three months before confinement with
four groups similarly composed who took no rest before
confinement. In every group he found that the difference in the
average weight of the child was markedly in favor of the women
who rested, and it was notable that the greatest difference was
found in the case of the farm girls who were probably the most
robust and also the hardest worked.

The usual time of gestation ranges between 274 and 280 days (or
280 to 290 days from the last menstrual period), and occasionally
a few days longer, though there is dispute as to the length of
the extreme limit, which some authorities would extend to 300
days, or even to 320 days (Pinard, in Richet's _Dictionnaire de
Physiologie_, vol. vii, pp. 150-162; Taylor, _Medical
Jurisprudence_, fifth edition, pp. 44, 98 et seq.; L.M. Allen,
"Prolonged Gestation," _American Journal Obstetrics_, April,
1907). It is possible, as Mueller suggested in 1898 in a These de
Nancy, that civilization tends to shorten the period of
gestation, and that in earlier ages it was longer than it is now.
Such a tendency to premature birth under the exciting nervous
influences of civilization would thus correspond, as Bouchacourt
has pointed out (_La Grossesse_, p. 113), to the similar effect
of domestication in animals. The robust countrywoman becomes
transformed into the more graceful, but also more fragile, town
woman who needs a degree of