Number of conceptions and conception losses, by Dr. Agnes Bluhm; the exhibitor gives the following explanation—
Hamburger's material deals with 1,042 marriages of the labouring classes in Berlin, with a total of 7,261 conceptions (an average of 6.97 conceptions for each woman); the material of Bluhm comprises 856 marriages of the wealthier and educated German middle and higher classes with a total of 3,856 conceptions (averaging 4.50 conceptions to each woman). Hamburger has counted as conception losses only miscarriages, premature births, stillbirths, or deaths from illness before the completion of the sixteenth year. Bluhm has included all those up to the twentieth year. Both have only included marriages which have been contracted at least twenty years back. As the births in these marriages apparently date back to twenty years, all living children are reckoned as survivors or conception results, even if they have not attained the sixteenth or twentieth year respectively. This has influenced the result optimistically, but as it has done so with both authors alike, the comparison of their results is admissible.
Figure 1 shows the conception losses in marriages of varying conception numbers (Curve A, Hamburger's working-men's families; Curve B, Bluhm's well-to-do families); both curves confirm Hamburger's words that "the percentage of the survivors gets smaller in proportion as the conception number increases." The mounting of Curve B in the families with ten births is probably a delusion brought about by a very small number. In the marriages with eleven or more births there are lost with the well-to-do one quarter and with the working-classes nearly two-thirds of the conceptions up to the twentieth or sixteenth year respectively.
Figure 2 represents the share which miscarriages and premature births have in the conception losses in marriages of different degrees of productiveness (Curve A, Hamburger; Curve B, Bluhm). Amongst the Berlin labouring classes on the average 17.89 per cent. of all conceptions are lost through miscarriage and premature birth; for the wealthier German families the figure is 7.59 per cent.
Figure 3 shows the share which deaths and stillbirths have in conception losses. With the labouring classes it amounts on the average to 32.75 per cent. (Curve A), and in the wealthier families to 10.55 per cent. (Curve B).