M. Brierre de Boismont, a French author, remarks: “It has been said, in a general way, that the cessation of the menstrua takes place about the forty-fifth year in this country—a little sooner or a little later. The fact is true; but we believe that a better appreciation would be made by presenting a table indicating the different periods of the critical age.” This author collected 181 cases of women, indicating the age at which they had ceased to menstruate, and here are the results:
| At 21 | 2 |
| 24 | 1 |
| 26 | 0 |
| 27 | 1 |
| 28 | 1 |
| 29 | 1 |
| 30 | 3 |
| 32 | 2 |
| 34 | 4 |
| 35 | 6 |
| 36 | 7 |
| 37 | 4 |
| 38 | 7 |
| 39 | 1 |
| 40 | 18 |
| 41 | 10 |
| 42 | 7 |
| 43 | 4 |
| 44 | 13 |
| 45 | 13 |
| 46 | 9 |
| 47 | 13 |
| 48 | 8 |
| 49 | 7 |
| 50 | 12 |
| 51 | 4 |
| 52 | 8 |
| 53 | 2 |
| 54 | 5 |
| 55 | 2 |
| 56 | 2 |
| 57 | 2 |
| 60 | 1 |
The time at which menstruation ceases in Great Britain, must be doubtless very nearly or quite the same as in this country. In the above table it will be perceived that twenty-six females had menstruation until fifty, and only three to forty-four, and four to forty-five years of age. According to this, the average is considerably above forty-five years in Great Britain; and it is probably about the same thing with us in the United States.
EXTENT OF THE FRUITFUL PERIOD.
The cessation of the menses, as I have remarked, is generally the limit of the period of child-bearing; but this rule, like all others, has its exceptions.
Bartholomew Mosse, according to Dr. Guy, mentions four cases of women pregnant in their fifty-first year, and Dr. Labatt, of Dublin, one; Knebel and Lamatte each one in the fifty-second year; Bartholomew Mosse and Knebel each one in the fifty-fourth year; a case of pregnancy at the same age (that of Mrs. Ashley) is also related in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1816, in the French accusation, in which the succession to an estate was disputed on the ground of the mother being fifty-eight years old when the child was born, and the decision was given in favor of the fact.
Pliny, Valescus de Tarenta, and Marra, of Venice, record cases of pregnancy at sixty.
Capuron, a French author, states that a woman of sixty-three was generally believed in Paris to have given birth to a daughter.
Dr. Beck, of Albany, quotes a case from the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, of a woman at White Hall, New York, becoming a mother at sixty-four.
A writer in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, Mr. Robertson, states that out of 10,000 pregnant females registered at the Manchester Lying-in Hospital, 436 were upward of forty-six years of age. Of these there were—