ABORTION AND ITS EFFECT’S. 
BY JOSEPH TABER JOHNSON, 
A. M., M. D., PH. I)., 
OF WASH I NOTON, D. C. 
Professor of Gynaecology in the University of 
Georgetown, etc., etc. 
Reprint prom the Maryland Medical Journal. 
RAL.TIMOKE : 
Journal Purlishinq Company. 
309 Park Avenue, 
1890. ABORTION AND ITS EFFECTS. 
BY JOSEPH TABER JOHNSON, 
A. M., M. D., PH. D., 
OF WASHINGTON, D. C. 
Piofess r of Gynaecology in the University of 
Georgetown, etc., etc. 
Reprint from the Mahylanu Medical Journal. 
BALTIMORE : 
Journal Publishing Company Print, 
No. 309 Park Avenue, 
1890. ABORTION AND ITS EFFECTS.* 
Mr. President and Fellows of the Medi- 
cal and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland: 
It will be especially difficult for me to 
interest the members of tins ancient and 
honorable Faculty, after suchmen as 
Billings, Weir Mitchell, Goodell, Osier 
and Welch have entertained and instruc- 
ted you by their eloquence and wisdom. 
Statistics of libraries and museums, 
the vagaries of the nervous system, the 
dangers and duties of the hour, the in- 
infectiousness of disease, and the license 
to practise, are all subjects which are 
full of interest, and have been ably presen- 
ted. I presume the committee expected 
me, as a gynaecologist, to discuss some 
topic in this branch of medicine or in 
abdominal surgery, and I fully intended 
"■Annual Oration delivered April 23rd, 1890, before 
the Medi< al and Chirurgical State Faculty of Maryland 
at Its 92nd Annual Session. 4 
to do so, but when I began to write it 
occurred to me that only a small propor- 
tion of the membership of a State Society 
would be interested in a special topic, and 
I shall therefore make (no apology for 
introducing a subject, which, though not 
of very savory odor, yet is of great inter- 
est to every member of the profession, 
whether he be young or old, a specialist 
or general practitioner, pro- fessor or 
student. 
I shall ask your attention, then, with- 
out further preface or delay, to the 
importance, the frequency, the wicked- 
ness, and to some of the effects of 
procured abortion. 
All writers upon obstetrics and gynae- 
cology admit and deplore the frequency 
with which the immature foetus is ex- 
pelled from the uterus. 
Thomas has an entire volume upon 
abortion now in press and soon to he 
published, the advance sheets of which I 
have been kindly allowed to read. Writers 
upon domestic economy, upon vital 
statistics, upon the natural increase and 
decrease of our population, upon law, 
theology and medicine, all vie with 
each other in attesting the importance 
and wickedness of forced abortion, and 5 
all, so far as they mention this point, 
agree that it has not only been distress- 
ingly frequent in the past, but that it 
has been steadily upon the increase, So 
much do I believe this to he the case 
and so far-reaching are its effects upon 
the health and morals of our people, that 
I hazard nothing when I declare that this 
subject is one of the most, if not the most 
important question before our profession 
to-day. 
Questions of drainage, sewage, quar- 
antine, vaccination, antiseptics, are all 
important in the prevention of disease, 
and have doubtless saved thousands of 
lives, but they all sink into insignificance 
in comparison with the importance of the 
subject under discussion. I believe that 
statistics might be adduced, if time and 
your patience would permit, to show 
conclusively that more lives are annually 
sacrificed by the unnecessary and inten- 
tional destruction of the human fcetus, 
than are saved by all these agencies com- 
bined. 
The recognized and described causes 
of abortion show that it occurs once to 
•every five labors, and that 90 per cent, 
of all married women have at least one 
miscarriage during their child-bearing 6 
life. These are frequent enough to 
excite the sympathy and invoke the ai’d 
of the profession, but I refer now 
more especially to that larger class, where 
there is a violent and premature expul- 
sion of the product of conception, 
independent of its age, viability, or 
normal formation, where it is artificially 
induced and intentional, and where it is 
not necessary for the safety of the mother, 
and would not otherwise have occurred. 
Some of the Legislations of our older 
States have been so alarmed at the lessen- 
ing of their population that they have 
appointed committees to investigate into 
the causes thereof ; and Dr. Nathan 
Allan of Massachusetts, in his report 
upon this subject, said that the native 
American stock of that State seemed to 
be dying out. He mentions small towns 
and cities where the only increase in the 
population was among those of recent 
foreign origin, and that in those cities 
and districts mostly populated by native 
American families, there were recorded 
more deaths than births ; that one hun- 
dred years ago it was rare to see families 
of less than six children, and frequently 
there were ten ; now it is rare to find 
rcs many as three, and often only one, or 7 
none at all. Grave apprehension was 
expressed inthis report, made more than 
twenty years ago, for the results which 
were then pointed out, and which seemed 
sure to follow. 
These results have been more than 
realized in that State. These foreign 
children have become of age and are now 
voters. The same influences have been 
at work during this generation as in the 
last, in an increased ratio; and to-day 
the proud city of the puritans, cultured 
Boston, has become almost, if not quite, 
an Irish and a Catholic city, rejoicing in 
the possession of a Mayor by the classic 
name of O’Brien. So long ago as 1857 
the American Medical Association became 
aroused on this subject, and at its meet- 
ing in Nashville in that year appointed a 
committee of eight prominent and able 
men, to report upon criminal abortion, 
with a view to its general suppression. 
A report was made in May of the next 
year, at Louisville, which, with the resolu 
tions accompanying it, were unanimously 
adopted. At a subsequent meeting a 
popular prize essay was authorized by the 
Association in which the wickedness of 
the crime should be set forth, its fre- 
quency condemned, and its injurious 8 
effects fully explained, so that any woman 
could easily understand. The essay 
accepted was written by Dr. It. R. Storer, 
of Boston, and was entitled “Why Not ? 
Or, A Book for Every Woman/’ A very 
large number were printed and were 
placed for sale in the book-stores through- 
out the length and breadth of the land. 
Medical, secular and religious journals 
commented favorably upon the essay, and 
the frequency and criminality of abortion 
was clearly set forth, and its perpetrators 
were severely denounced. I have thus 
far and from official testimony endeav- 
ored to show the importance of my 
subject and the views which were held 
by the highest medical body in the land 
upon its importance, and the great need 
which existed for its suppression. It has 
also been shown that at least two States 
in our Union had become so alarmed 
over the decrease in the American element 
of their population, that legislative action 
was taken for its discovery and prevention. 
Very interesting and instructive reading 
may be founds in the reports of Dr. 
Nathan Allan, of Lowell, and Dr. Snow, 
of Providence, upon this subject. 
From the same sources which proved 
to Dr. Storer and the American Medical 9 
Association the frequency of this crime, 
we can now gather greatly increased and 
multiplied testimony that this wanton, 
unnatural, unnecessary and basely wicked 
destruction of foetal life has not only not 
been suppressed in obedience to unani- 
mously passed resolutions, but that it 
constantly has been, and is now, largely 
upon the increase in our country, and 
for that matter throughout the entire 
civilized world. 
This crime is not indigenous to any 
location, section, climate or continent. 
Its perpetration is as world-wide as are 
its murderous and otherwise injurious 
effects upon those engaged in this unholy 
warfare. Storer showed, in 1866, from 
indisputable evidence, that abortion and 
still-births were twelve times more fre- 
quent in some of our cities than the worst 
statistics had ever shown to exist in Paris 
or Vienna. From the same reasoning 
we cannot believe that a better condition 
exists in those cities now ; on the con- 
trary, we are forced to the conviction 
that unnecessary abortions are made to 
occ ur in a greatly increased ratio, and 
the country districts, usually the 
most pure and upright in their morals, 
are not far behind the cities in proportion 10 
to their population in their destruction 
of metal life. 
American families have not increased 
in size, and no facts exist to prove that 
the fecundity of the men and women has 
in any way been lessened by the advances 
in civilization. 
The evidence of physicians could be 
adduced, if necessary, to demonstrate 
these facts. Vital statistics might be 
quoted to show that in the true American 
stock in some parts of our country the 
ratio of deaths over the births has steadily 
increased. The published number of 
maternal deaths from this malpractice 
does not appear to be decreasing. 
The arrests and trials for abortion, 
while they may in a. very faint degree 
indicate its frequency, do, on the other 
hand, and in a very emphatic manner, 
demonstrate the laxity of morals and the 
law in permitting so many of the guilty to 
escape their just punishment. The obsta- 
cles to conviction, the difficulties of proof, 
the inefficiency of the law, as well as the 
evident lack of a desire to convict, on the 
part of all those engaged in these trials, 
may explain the fact that of the 32 
arrests and trials of abortionists reported 
by the Attorney General of the State of 11 
Massachusetts, in a period of eight years,, 
not one single conviction resulted. 
Englemann says, “Abortionists every- 
where are known. In the larger cities 
of this continent, as well as Europe, they 
achieve a widespread fame, are well 
known, and yet rarely, if ever, convicted. 
It is a notorious fact that these worst 
of criminals almost invariably escape, and 
even in the States of Germany, where the- 
laws are strict and rigidly enforced, where 
the crime of abortion is punished by 
imprisonment of from four to twenty 
years, that eminent teacher of medical 
jurisprudence, J. L. Caspar, says that 
of all the many accused, never a one 
was condemned, and in no one case was 
the crime proven. They are sheltered 
by the words of the law and the sympathy 
of the community.”* 
In many cases the arrest and trial is 
not for the crime intended. The inten- 
tion is, and of a necessity must always 
be, to kill the foetus ; this being done 
in the dark, like other deeds of evil, there 
are no witnesses, and the crime usually 
escapes public notice, unless a bungler in 
the art should at the same time injure- 
or destroy the mother also. 
♦Article on Abortion, Pepper’s System of Medicine- 12 
There is little or no trouble in securing 
•conviction then, for malpractice ; but 
the indignation of the virtuous public 
and the majesty of violated law are only 
then aroused and invoked because the 
unskilful manipulator killed two human 
beings instead of one. It is for the 
crime against the mother which was not 
intended, but which unfortunately and 
accidentally happened, that the criminal 
is brought to trial. 
A story is told of a wicked and unjust 
judge in the early days of the wild and 
woody West, who, in pronouncing sen- 
tence upon a man proven guilty of 
seduction—a crime which is the twin 
aister to abortion—stated to him that it 
was not so much for committing the 
wicked deed that he sentenced him to 
hard labor in the common jail, but it 
was for allowing himself to be caught in 
the act and making so much public 
a can dal and family exposure. 
Another reason given by Storer in his 
book before referred to, for his belief in 
the frequency of abortion, is the pecuniary 
auccess of known abortionists, and of the 
venders of abortion-producing nostrums, 
and again, the experience of physicians 
on account of direct and frequent appli- 13 
cations made to them to commit this 
crime, and in the immediate and multi- 
tudinous after-effects, which they see in 
their daily practice upon its unhappy 
victims. 
The evidences from these quarters, if 
they were convincing twenty years ago, 
have surely lost none of their force and 
convincing qualities with the lapse of 
time. The public advertisements of 
known abortionists in our newspapers 
and some religious journals are more 
public and more numerous now than they 
were then, and the public display and 
ready sale of abortion-producing nostrums 
by our druggists is confessedly upon the 
increase. 
A generation ago these facts were all 
so fully and completely proven by the 
able committee of the American Medical 
Association and set forth in popular lan- 
guage in its prize essay for distribution 
among the women of our land, that no 
effort was ever publicly made to gainsay 
or disprove any of the positions taken— 
they were all admitted and deplored. The 
effect for a time was salutary, and its 
author received letters innumerable from 
good people and from mothers made happy 
by the possession of healthy offspring, 14 
whose habit it had previously been to 
resort to abortion. 
The public conscience was aroused and 
the promoters of the move in the Associ- 
ation no doubt congratulated themselves 
that they had accomplished a great good 
for society and the State, for morals, law 
and religion. Secular, medical and re- 
ligious journals approved, clergymen 
preached and a sense of security probably 
settled down upon the virtuous public 
that another growing evil had been boldly 
met, the battle against it successfully 
waged and the victory won ; but the 
sequel in this generation proves that it 
was no more of a victory than was gained 
over his creditors by the impecunious 
Micawber when he gave them his note 
of hand, and thanked the Lord that his 
debts were paid. 
There is no longer any doubt from a 
consideration of all the evidences before re 
lied upon to prove its frequency, that abor- 
tion is now fully as frequent as it ever was 
in this country, and, moreover, that it is 
alarmingly on the increase ; not only is 
this believed to be true of the cities, but 
the remotest country districts seem to be 
infected also. 
The excuses given are the same now 15 
as they were then, and the wickedness of 
the act is, and always will be, the same. 
In one respect our otherwise noble pro- 
fession is sadly at fault; it has not acted 
up to the courage of its convictions. Of 
a necessity it must be, and I believe that 
it is, unanimous in the knowledge and 
belief that the foetus is just as much 
alive at one period of its intra-uterine 
existence as another ; it must be alive or 
dead all the time. If alive, it is just as 
much a crime to kill it in the first month 
of pregnancy as in the ninth, or after it 
is born. Our text-books all teach, and 
our profession holds, that the spark of 
life is infused at conception, and we 
must believe, with Percival, that ‘‘to ex- 
tinguish this first spark of life is a crime 
of the same nature, both against our 
Maker and society, as to destroy an 
infant, a child, or a man.” 
Many otherwise good and exemplary 
women, who would rather part with their 
right hands, or let their tongues cleave to 
the roof of their mouths than to commit 
a crime, seem ('to believe that prior to 
quickening it is no more harm to cause 
the evacuation of the contents of their 
wombs, than it is that of their bladders 
or their bowels. The law itself is largely 16 
upon their side in this most important 
question, the penalties affixed to 
this crime being slight before quick- 
ening and vastly insufficient afterwards. 
Before a woman is quick with child, 
abortion being considered simply as a 
misdemeanor, after quickening as a 
felony, and only is the child considered 
sufficiently alive to be killed, in the eye 
of the law, which ought to protect it, 
when it has been entirely born and is sep- 
arated from its mother and living an 
independent existence. The experience 
of every physician is, that good women 
as well as bad, are committing this 
wrong in utter ignorance of the fact 
that it is a crime. 
They will boldly argue the question 
and will fully admit its wickedness, after 
they can feel the motion of the child. 
They condemn its destruction as a cruel 
murder after quickening, and would no 
more be guilty of embruing their fair 
hands in its innocent blood, after they 
could feel it move, than they would be 
accessory to the destruction of their liv- 
ing children. The fault of our profes- 
sion is that this belief exists at all. If 
we really believe in accordance with the 
evidence and teaching of our science, 17 
that the foetus is alive before quickening, 
it must he our fault if this dense ignor- 
ance longer exists in the minds of our 
people, and that it so hinders the proper 
and just administration of the law. If 
the child is alive, as we believe and teach 
in the first, second, and third months of 
pregnancy just as much as it is in seventh 
eighth, and ninth ; then its destructien 
must he as wicked in one month as 
another. If the murder of an unarmed 
man in the dark and behind his back is 
deemed by all good people as a dastardly 
and cowardly act, and if the murder of 
innocent and unprotected childi’en is 
loudly denounced the world over, what 
language can be sufficient to express our 
disapprobation and contempt for those 
heartless and soulless miscreants who are 
in the most wholesale and cowardly man- 
ner, killing countless numbers of child- 
ren, who are not even protected by the 
law. Those who are engaged in the 
perpetration of abortion should no longer 
be able to shield their crimes behind this 
cloak of real or pretended ignorance. 
There is not a household in the land 
or in the civilized world which is not 
more or less permeated by the influence 
and teaching of the noble science which 18 
we practise, and this ignorance of the 
law of life, or of the fact of life, before 
quickening, could, if we were sufficiently 
alive to its importance, be utterly done 
away with and wiped off the face of the 
earth in a single year. Otherwise, good 
women would no longer boast of the 
number of foetuses they had gotten rid of, 
and they would no longer teach their 
sisters how they could accomplish the 
same “innocent” feat. When it is 
known and universally acknowledged 
that to extinguish the first spark of 
human life is a crime of the same nature, 
both against our Maker and society, as it 
is to destroy an infant, a child, or a man; 
then, and not until then will abortion 
cease to he a common occurrence, and 
good men and women become ready to 
assume the responsibility of their own 
deliberate acts. 
The luxuries of life, the demands of 
fashionable society, the dislike of child- 
ren, the expense of their maintenance 
and education, questions of taste, indo- 
lence and convenience can no longer be 
pleaded as an excuse for the committal 
of a cowardly, dirty, contemptible, 
bloody, and wholly unnatural crime. 
When wholesome laws are enacted and 19 
enforced, which will punish not only the 
principals, but all the aiders and abettors 
and accessories to this crime, just as 
they do other murders ; then its commis- 
sion will be confined to those, who, to 
carry out their wicked purposes, are 
willing to defy any and all laws, in spite 
of the disastrous consequences which they 
invite and invoke to follow. Lawyers 
and judges need enlightment upon this 
subject as well as women ; they should 
learn that we do not, and cannot discrim- 
inate between one month and another 
when the foetus is more or less alive; that 
quickening amounts to nothing. We all 
know that some women quicken as early 
as three, or three and a half months, and 
others not until six, and some not at all: 
and who will arise and say that in these 
late cases of quickening the foetus is not 
just as much alive as in the early ones, 
and just as much entitled to the protec- 
tion of the law? 
That life is not infused at quickening 
we are all agreed. The foetus then being 
as much alive before quickening as after ; 
the popular belief and convenient ignor- 
ance on this point, it becomes the moral 
and Christian duty of our profession to 
cprrect. 20 
The pregnant woman receives a great 
many hints as the signs and symptoms 
accumulate and corroborate each other 
tliat a live and growing foetus is develop- 
ing in her uterus, but she now waits for 
a decided kick before she will believe that 
the foetus is alive. This kick is waited 
for anxiously by the woman as well as 
the law, to announce that the child is 
sufficiently formed for its destruction to 
constitute even a misdemeanor. 
It must kick very decidedly and un- 
mistakably for several months before its 
killing constitutes a felony, and as one 
judge has held, should it be knocked on 
the head with a hammer, or strangled 
with a garter after its head is born, but 
before it is wholly delivered and separated 
from its mother, it is not sufficiently 
alive in the eye of the law, for its killing 
to constitute murder. 
Having drawn attention to the impor- 
tance, frequency and wickedness of pro- 
cured abortion, I beg in conclusion to 
remind you of some of its effects upon 
the morals and the physical well being of 
those engaged in this nefarious practice. 
By those who in their hearts consider 
it wrong to destroy the unborn child, 
there must be an undermining of the 21 
moral nature which will show its effects 
in many other other directions than the 
one under discussion. But of this phase 
of the subject T will leave others to speak. 
In one respect, however, it deeply con- 
cerns us as well as its unhappy victims. 
The remorse which comes to some, over 
the killing of their unborn children 
sometimes develops into melancholia and 
terminates in suicide or the mad house. 
Many a woman has lost her life by the 
addition of this depressing element to the 
slighter forms of septicaemia following a 
procured abortion. Thus Tardiew re- 
ports that of one hundred and sixteen 
cases of criminal abortion collected by 
himself in Paris, sixty died outright and 
many had a lingering convalesence, while 
out of two hundred and thirty-four cases 
of abortion occurring from various causes 
and treated by physicians in the Rotunda 
Hospital :n Dublin, only one died, and 
the cause of death in her case was from 
mitral disease of the heart. Lusk, in his 
classic work on obstetrics says that death 
in consequence of criminal abortion is 
especially frequent. Yet of the many 
cases who enter Bellevue Hospital for 
treatment, whose histories he has found 
in the record books o the hospital, all 22 
have ended in recovery. Cases of in- 
duced abortion in their desire to avoid 
notice and publicity, frequently fail to 
properly care for themselves ; they get up 
and about too soon, while the uterus is 
still large and heavy, and thereby lay the 
foundation for future suffering and the 
life of an invalid. 
Hirst, in Mann’s System of Obstetrics 
Pp. 316, says : “Criminal abortions with 
the additional risks of septicaemia from 
the unskilful use of instruments, and 
the probability of infection from unclean 
hands and implements, would show a 
surprisingly high rate of mortality if it 
were possible to collect accurate statistics, 
which for obvious reasons it is impossible 
to do.” 
Englemann says, “woman requires 
skilled aid in labor, the physiological ter- 
mination of pregnancy, more necessary still 
is this in the premature pathological in- 
terruption of this condition in abortion.” 
Benninger reported twenty-one cases 
of tetanus following abortion in the 
British Gynaecological Journal in 1888. 
Charpentier in his great work pub- 
lished three year3 ago says : “the prog- 
nosis of abortion for the mother is grave ; 
for even if life is rarely compromised, 
health frequently is.” He adds further 23 
that “the prognosis is most unfavorable in 
oases where the miscarriage is the result 
of criminal manipulations.” 
The American editor of this work says 
in a note, “miscarriage is fraught with 
more danger to the woman than labor at 
term, because as Goodell aptly puts it, 
the process is like plucking immature 
fruit.” 
The occurrence of abortion takes the 
uterus at a disadvantage. It is imma- 
ture ; it is not ready to expel its con- 
tents ; its contracting powers are not 
developed, and its contractions are im- 
perfect after as well as before the. act. 
The membranes are especially adherent 
and frequently, if not alwrays, some por- 
tion of them is retained after the prema- 
ture expulsion of the embryo. 
The decidua is soft, enlarged, and its 
bulky remains easily form the nidus for 
the development of germs for the future 
production of septicaemia or menorrhagia. 
Traumatism is frequently present, invit- 
ing the absorption of septic germs and if 
blood-poisoning in a grave form is fortu- 
nately escaped, cellulitis, salpingitis, 
ovarian or pelvic abscess is liable to de- 
velop. Subinvolution and its resulting 
increased size and weight of the uterus 24 
often making the life of the woman a 
burden from the endometritis, salpingitis 
endocervicitis and the various uterine dis- 
placements which naturally follow as a 
painful train of symptoms. 
These are all rendered more probable 
from the embarrassing necessity for keep- 
ing up appearances and diverting atten- 
tion and suspicion from their real cause. 
These effects of abortion, when it 
occurs from natural causes and when 
treated by skilful physicians, are difficult 
enough to avert, and are only prevented 
by rest in bed, good nursing and con- 
tinued and careful preventive measures ; 
when they occur, however, as they often 
do, in boarding houses and hotels, and 
among those women who desire great 
secrecy to avoid exposure and shame, 
these attentions are either not sought or 
permitted. The mental state, added to 
the physical condition, has proved too 
great a strain for many an erring woman. 
Remorse of conscience has been the last 
straw which has driven some of these 
unhappy victims of their own error and 
folly to suicide or insanity. 
Convalescence is generally prolonged 
from these causes, and the patient has 
many weeks, and perhaps months, if not 25 
years, of invalidism in which to regret 
the errors of an ill-spent hour. 
Our free dispensaries and charity hos- 
pitals afford innumerable examples of 
broken constitutions and ruined lives 
which have had their sad beginning in an 
improperly treated abortion. It is the 
usual explanation given by a majority of 
the frequenters of the gynaecological 
clinic, that the displacement or inflam- 
mation of the uterus for which the 
sufferer applies for relief—that her symp- 
toms dated back to an abortion, three, 
five, or ten yeare ago. Many of the 
cases now operated on for otherwise 
incurable pus-tubes, or chronic inflam- 
matory disease of the ovaries, date all 
their troubles back to a neglected abor- 
tion. These sufferings are not all con- 
fined to the charity patients in the lower 
walks of life. They are as common as is 
the custom of abortion itself. No one 
rank in society appropriates them all. 
The experience of gynaecologists the 
world over will confirm the statement 
that a majority of the patients that we 
are called upon to treat in our offices, or 
in the fine residences of their fair owners, 
are the outcome of abortions or of the 26 
preventive measures used against con- 
ception. 
This latter subject was fully exposed 
and discussed not long ago by a distin- 
guished writer and teacher from a neigh- 
boring city in an address upon “The 
Dangers and Duties of the Hour” before 
this body and upon this platform. This 
discussion of my subject forms a very 
appropriate appendix to his masterly 
oration, and my chief regret is that your 
committee selected no better man to 
bring before you the dangers and duties 
of the hour so far as they relate to this 
still more important subject. It is an 
every-day occurrence for ladies to consult 
busy gynaecologists in our large cities in 
regard to symptoms, which, upon enquiry, 
are found to date back to an unfortunate 
abortion. It would be quite within the 
limits of truth were I to state that two- 
thirds of the work of the gynoecologists 
of this age finds its chief cause in the 
evils discussed upon this platform by Dr. 
Goodell and myself. It is a sad com- 
mentary upon the Christian civilization 
of the age ; but the experience of honest 
workers in this department of our science 
1 believe would corroborate the truth of 
this saddening statement. 27 
Our sadness, however, is somewhat 
lessened when we are able to state also 
that the causes which we lament are 
among those which are demonstrated as 
preventable. If many err through igno- 
rance we may here find a glorious oppor- 
tunity for the exercise of the law of 
prevention. Much has been said of late 
of the greater mission of our science in 
the prevention than in the cure of disease. 
How can a better field of labor be found 
than in the direction I have indicated. 
Where and how can medical men save 
more lives or prevent more suffering than 
by teaching women the dangers of abor- 
tion and thus saving their bodies, and 
perhaps their souls, from ruin in this 
li/e and the life to come* In this exer- 
cise of our great mission we may be sure 
of the approval of our own consciences, 
of the co-operation of the great Physician 
in the prevention of much sin and sorrow, 
and of the final judgment of “Well done, 
thou good and faithful servant.” 
Upon motion of Prof. Wm. T. Howard 
a unanimous vote of thanks was tendered 
to Dr. Johnson, for his very timely and 
interesting address, and a copy requested 
for publication in the transactions of the 
Faculty. 
920 Farragut Square.