nications does not cease with the termination of the suit or other litigation, nor is it affected by the party ceasing to employ the attorney to which the communication was made and retaining another, nor by any other change of relations between them, nor by the death of the client. The seal of the law once fixed upon them remains forever, unless removed by the party himself in whose favor it was then placed. It is not removed without the client's consent, even though the interests of criminal justice may seem to require the production of the evidence:" 1 Greenl. on Ev. 243; see also Brown v. Payson, 6 N. H. 444; Com. v. Swan, 30 Conn. 6; Flack v. Null, 26 Tex. 273.

Under statutory provisions protecting professional and confidential communications made to a priest, clergyman, physician or surgeon the same rule would seem to apply. And this seal of confidence would undoubtedly be placed upon the mouth of an interpreter employed to translate such communications: See Jackson v. French, 3 Wend. 337; Parker v. Carter, 4 Mumf. (Va.) 273; and to private secretaries and clerks: See Taylor v. Foster, 2 ̊C. & P. (Eng.) 195; Fort v. Hayne, 1 C. & P. 545; Landsberger v. Gorham, 5 Cal. 450; Sibley v. Waffle, 16 N. Y. 180.

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CHAPTER V.

ABORTION.

§ 73. Defined; quick with child explained.

Abortion is defined as the expulsion of the fœtus at a period of utero-gestation so early that it has not acquired the power of independent life: Bouv. L. D., Abortion; Quain's Dic. of Med. 3.

By the common law of England an attempt to destroy a child, en ventre sa mere, was a misdemeanor; and in case of the death of the child it was, at an early period, held to be murder : Rosc. Cr. Ev. (4th Lond. ed.) 260; 1 Rosc. C. L. (3d Lond. ed.) 671; 2 Whart. C. L., § 1220. But the English law on this subject, it seems, has never been fully adopted in this country; and in the absence of statutory regulations to the contrary it is not a criminal offense in this country to administer a drug, or to perform an operation upon a pregnant woman, by her request or with her consent, with the intention and for the pur

pose of causing an abortion and premature birth of the foetus of which she is pregnant, and by means of which an abortion is in fact accomplished, unless at the time of the administration of the drug or the performance of such operation such woman was quick with child: See Com. v. Wood, 11 Gray, 419; Wilson v. State, 22 Ohio, 319; Russ. on Crimes, 671; 15 Ia. 177; Evans v. People, 49 N. Y. 86.

The term "quick with child," in the sense here used, is the sensation the mother has of the motion of the child she has conceived. The period at which the mother first experiences a quickening or motion of the child may vary with different persons or under different circumstances. The child is in fact alive from the first moment of conception, and, according to its age and state of development, the foetus has different modes of manifesting its life, and during a portion of the period of gestation, by its motion. By the growth of the embryo, the womb is enlarged until it becomes too great a size to be contained in the pelvis. It then rises to the abdomen, when the motion of the foetus is for the first time felt. The period when quickening is first experienced or

observed varies from the tenth to the twenty-fifth week after conception; but usually it occurs about the sixteenth week: Denman on Midw. 129; 1 Leg. Gaz. Rep. (Pa.) 183.

Life of the foetus is said to commence when a woman first becomes quick with child; and procuring an abortion after that period is manslaughter by the more modern common law of England, as well as by statutes. The common law did not interfere to prevent women convicted of a capital offense from being executed, unless they were "quick with child:" 2 Hale Pl. Cr. 413. But this, as it will be observed, is quite an arbitrary rule; and there would appear to be no ground for making this particular point of time in foetal development the pivot upon which such important results and responsibilities are made to hinge. The following distinctions relating to this subject have been approved: "Quick with child, is having conceived; with quick child, is where the child has quickened : " 8 C. & P. (Eng.) 265; 1 Leg. Gaz. Rep. (Pa.) 183; see 26 Am. Dec. 60 n.; 2 Whart. & St. Med. Jur. 1230.

Dr. Alexander Russell Simpson, in his valuable article on the subject of Miscarriage, found

in Quain's Dictionary of Medicine, referring to the maternal causes of miscarriage, observes as follows: "The causes of miscarriage on the part of the mother are either general or local. Amongst the general or constitutional conditions that favor the occurrence of abortion we note : Firstly. All the causes that lead to depression of a woman's health. Abortions are frequent, for instance, in times of famine-amongst women who yield themselves to excesses; in anæmic women, and in those tainted with syphilitic poison. Often enough, especially in the last class, the cause of the abortion can be traced to some morbid change in the maternal portion of the placenta; but sometimes it seems to be due simply to the impure or impoverished condition of the patient's blood. Secondly. Fevers, such as the zymotic fevers, and acute inflammations, more particularly of important viscera, such as pneumonia, occurring in gravid women, very frequently become complicated by abortion. Thirdly. Shock may bring on miscarriage, whether operating simply through the nervous system, of which we meet occasional examples ; or, as is more frequently the case, by producing