University of Virginia Library

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION,

It was with many misgivings that I first offered this little volume to the profession in June, 1882.

The kindly criticisms it received from the medical press at home and abroad have been a pleasant surprise, and, together with the rapid exhausting of the first edition, have assured me of the favorable reception which has been accorded this rather novel research, notwithstanding the unfortunate arrangement of the material. An equally agreeable and satisfactory proof of the interest which the, profession has taken in the anthropological aspect of midwifery, to which I have endeavored to direct attention in the present volume, will be found in the references to obstetric practice among various races, as well as the elaborate articles upon the subject which have appeared in the Medical Journals of Europe and America since the publication of Labor Among Primitive Peoples, and have become quite frequent of late.

The call for a second edition has afforded me an opportunity of adding much valuable and interesting information, which I have received during the last six months, and of correcting the arrangement of the book, so that the chapters now follow in natural order.

Much time and labor has been expended upon this edition by the publishers, Messrs. Chambers & Co., and it is owing to their energy and interest that I am enabled to present this second thoroughly revised, completely changed, and very much enlarged edition to my professional brethren, who so generously overlooked the faults of the first.

At the same time a German edition, prepared by Prof. Hennig, of Leipzig, will appear in Vienna, with some additions upon the pelvic measurements among various races and their importance in relation to the parturient act—a subject upon which Professor Hennig is an acknowledged authority—and I had hoped that it would be possible to incorporate this valuable chapter in the present volume; but as the publishers will delay no longer, I must send forth this second edition as it is, with the wish THAT IT MAY BE AS WELL RECEIVED AS ITS PREDECESSOR!