[76] Fourteenth Registration Report, 1855.
[77] In the above remarks we must not be misunderstood. We believe Massachusetts no worse with regard to abortion than many other portions of the country, but that its registration is conducted with greater care. From the statistics given it may easily be surmised what the amount of this crime must be elsewhere. It is necessarily of infinitely more common occurrence than infanticide, the murder of children after birth, for proof of the frequency of which, at the present moment, in Great Britain, we refer to Dr. Burke Ryan’s Fothergillian Essay on the subject in the London Sanitary Review for last July, and to the London Lancet of corresponding date.
[78] As, for instance, in the regularly progressive series of deaths and births, as compared with the population; constant, also as compared with each other:—Population of Massachusetts: by census of 1850, 994,665; 1855, 1,132,369. Deaths: 1851, 18,934; 1852, 18,482; 1853, 20,301; 1854, 21,414; 1855, 20,798. Births: 1851, 28,681; 1852, 29,802; 1853, 30,920; 1854, 31,997; 1855, 32,845.
[79] Reports of Attorney-General of Massachusetts, from 1849 to 1858. State Documents.
[80] Comptes Rendus Annuels de la Justice Criminelle.
[81] Introductory Lecture, 1854, p. 17.
[82] Report to Suffolk Dist. Med. Society, May, 1857; New York Med. Gazette, July, 1857, p. 390; N. H. Journal of Medicine, July, 1857, p. 211.
[83] Loc. cit., p. 313.
[84] The Law of Population, 1830.
[85] Hume, Essays, vol. i. No. xi., p. 431.