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CONTRACEPTION

treat the woman as a subservient and negligible factor but paid great regard to her requirements, as is also seen by the elaborate advice given to the man about his duty to arouse her properly and give her full satisfaction.

The Hindu theologians, however, pushed their logical premises to such an extreme that it was considered a crime for a girl to menstruate before she was married (see p. 235 ante) and the child marriages and general social conditions became extremely unfavourable to infant life, particularly that of female infants. Abortion became rife, and we read in Webb[1] "Perhaps no country on earth has immolated so many new-born infants as India, nor has any race of mankind more generally practised the abominable art of murdering children when yet in the womb of the mother."

Abortion was procured by inserting a stick into the womb, also by internal concoctions of various sorts such as asafœtida, ginger, garlic, long pepper, and various native plants. For instance, the "expressed

  1. ↑ Allan Webb (1848): "Pathologia Indica, or the Anatomy of Indian Diseases, based upon morbid specimens, from all parts of the Indian Empire in the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College." Ed. 2. Pp. xxxiv, lxi, 304, 340, bis (imperfect copy B.M. ?). Calcutta, 1848.

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