The Mother and Her Child | Page 5

3 4 5 6 7 | June.
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========+======= Sept. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 |
June. | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 |
---------+-------------------------------------------------+------- Sept. | 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | June. | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 | July.
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========+======= Oct. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 |
July. | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 |
---------+-------------------------------------------------+------- Oct. | 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | July. | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | Aug.
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========+======= Nov. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 |
Aug. | 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 |
---------+-------------------------------------------------+------- Nov. | 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 | Aug. | 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1
2 3 4 5 6 | Sept.

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========+======= Dec. | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 |
Sept. | 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 |
---------+-------------------------------------------------+------- Dec. | 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 | Sept. | 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 | Oct.
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Supposing the upper figure in each pair of horizontal lines to represent
the first day of the last menstrual period, the figure beneath it, with the
month designated in the margin, will show the probable date of
confinement.
CHAPTER II
STORY OF THE UNBORN CHILD
To every physician in every community, sooner or later in his
experience there come thoughtless women making requests that we
even hesitate to write about. Their excuses for the crime which they
seek to have the physician join them in committing, range all the way
from "I don't want to go to the trouble," to "Doctor, I've got seven
children now, and I can't even educate and dress them properly;" or,
maybe, "I nearly lost my life with the last one."
EMBRYOLOGICAL IGNORANCE
One little woman came to us the other day from the suburbs, and
honestly, frankly, related this story:
"We've been married just six months, I have continued my stenographic
work to add the sixty-five dollars to our monthly income. Doctor, we
must meet our monthly payments on the home, I must continue to work,
or we shall utterly fail. I am perfectly willing a baby shall come to us
two years from now, but, doctor, I just can't allow this one to go on,
you must help me just this once. Why doctor, there can't be much form
or life there, it's only three months now, or will be next week, and you

know it's nothing but a mass of jelly."
She had talked with a "confidential friend" in her neighborhood, had
been told that she "could do it herself," but fearing trouble or infection,
had come to the conclusion she had better go to a "clean, reputable
physician," to have the abortion performed.
This is not the place to narrate the experiences of the unfortunate
victims of habitual criminal abortion, but we would like to impress
upon the reader some realization of the untimely deaths, the awful
suffering, and the life-long remorse and sorrow of the poor, misguided
women who listen to the criminal advice of neighborhood
"busybodies." The infections, the invalidism, the sterility that so often
follow in the wake of these practices, are well known to all medical
people.
THE STREAM OF LIFE
And so after the patient's last statement, "It's nothing but a mass of
jelly," we began the simple but wonderfully beautiful story of the
development of the "child enmothered." Just as all vegetables, fruits,
nuts, flowers, and grains come from seeds sown into fertile soil, and
just as these seeds receive nourishment from the soil, rain, and sunshine,
so all our world of brothers and sisters, of fathers and mothers, came
from tiny human seeds, and in their turn received nourishment from the
peculiarly adapted stream of life, which flows in the maternal veins for
the nourishment and upbuilding of the unborn embryo.
Every little girl and boy baby that comes into the world, has stored