On criminal abortion : a lecture introductory to the course on obstetrics, and diseases of women and children : University of Pennsylvania, session 1854-5 / by Hugh L. Hodge.

  • Hodge, Hugh L. (Hugh Lenox), 1796-1873.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On criminal abortion : a lecture introductory to the course on obstetrics, and diseases of women and children : University of Pennsylvania, session 1854-5 / by Hugh L. Hodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

    13/20
    centa and uterus, are so indirect (as will be hereafter demon- strated), that we are justified in asserting that the mother has little more influence upon the child in utero than the parent bird has upon its offspring in the egg. If the question, therefore, be returned upon us, when does that mystical union between our corporeal and spiritual nature, be- tween matter and spirit, body and soul occur? We answer, at the time of conception: It is then only, the father can, in any way, exert an influence over his offspring; it is then only the female germ is in direct union with the mother; the connection after- wards is indirect and imperfect. To suppose that the body only is generated at conception, and that the spirit is subsequently added, is, in the absence of all direct revelation on the subject, philosophically untrue, being at variance with the facts and with reason, as has already been illustrated and enforced. I have been led into this discussion, gentlemen, rather further than I anticipated, but not further than its importance demands. It is, in all respects, interesting and important. The opinions of medical men on these subjects regulate public sentiment, govern the tribunals of justice, and influence even the minds of the mental philosopher and the scrutinizing theologian. As respects the subject of the vitality of the foetus in utero, unfortunately, the in- considerate speculations of physiologists have become the founda- tion on which legislators have constructed laws, and the moralist promulgated rules, regulating human sentiments and conduct, on the interesting and important subjects of abortion or premature labor. If the embryo and foetus be, as the Stoics supposed, merely portio mains viscerum ; if it be not possessed of a sentient princi- ple, a living soul, until the period of actual delivery, then all attempts to procure abortion or premature labor, to destroy the embryo or foetus in utero, are comparatively venial. Instead of being regarded as a crime of the darkest dye, a crime involving human life, human happiness, and the best interests of society, it is a mere misdemeanor hardly to be noticed or punishable in the slightest manner. Hence, most of the ancient and modern laws do not protect the foetus in utero on the principle of an independ- ent existence. They merely regard the attempt to destroy it as an injury to the mother, to be punished according to the kind and decree of injury thus inflicted on the parent. About the year