int to
more than one instance in which, by this advice, he has succeeded in
adding to the happiness of parties who for years had been vainly hoping
for the accomplishment of their wishes.

Repose of the woman, and, above all, sojourn on the bed after the act of
generation, also facilitates conception. Hippocrates, the great father
of medicine, was aware of this, and laid stress upon it in his advice to
sterile wives.

The womb and the breasts are bound together by very strong sympathies:
that which excites the one will stimulate the other. Dr. Charles Loudon
mentions that four out of seven patients, by acting on this hint, became
mothers. A similar idea occurred to the illustrious Marshall Hall, who
advised the application of a strong infant to the breast. Fomentations
of warm milk to the breasts and the corresponding portion of the spinal
column, and the use of the breast-pump two or three times a day, just
before the menstrual period, have also been recommended by good medical
authorities. Horseback exercise, carried to fatigue, seems occasionally
to have conduced to pregnancy.

The greatest hope of success against sterility is to change the dominant
state of the constitution. But this can only be effected under suitable
medical advice. The treatment of sterility--thanks to the recent
researches of Dr. Marion Sims--is much more certain than formerly; and
the intelligent physician is now able to ascertain the cause, and point
out the remedy, where before all was conjecture and experiment. The
sterile wife should, herefore, be slow in abandoning all hope of ever
becoming a mother.

ON THE LIMITATION OF OFFSPRING.

No part of our subject is more delicate than this. Very few people are
willing to listen to a dispassionate discussion of the propriety or
impropriety of limiting within certain bounds the number of children in
a family. On the one side are many worthy physicians and pious
clergymen, who, without listening to any arguments, condemn every effort
to avoid large families; on the other, are numberless wives and
husbands, who turn a deaf ear to the warnings of doctors and the
thunders of divines, and, eager to escape a responsibility they have
assumed, hesitate not to resort to the most dangerous and immoral means
to accomplish this end.

We ask both parties to lay aside prejudice and prepossession, and
examine with us this most important social question in all its bearings.

Let us first inquire whether