Pathology: The Foetus_, p. 475), as well as Niven, also asks only
for one month's compulsory rest during pregnancy, with indemnity.
Arthur Helme, however, taking a more comprehensive view of all
the factors involved, concludes in a valuable paper on "The
Unborn Child: Its Care and Its Rights" (_British Medical
Journal_, Aug. 24, 1907), "The important thing would be to
prohibit pregnant women from going to work at all, and it is as
important from the standpoint of the child that this prohibition
should include the early as the late months of pregnancy."

In England little progress has yet been made as regards this
question of rest during pregnancy, even as regards the education
of public opinion. Sir William Sinclair, Professor of Obstetrics
at the Victoria University of Manchester, has published (1907) _A
Plea for Establishing Municipal Maternity Homes_. Ballantyne, a
great British authority on the embryology of the child, has
published a "Plea for a Pre-Maternity Hospital" (_British Medical
Journal_, April 6, 1901), has since given an important lecture on
the subject (_British Medical Journal_, Jan. 11, 1908), and has
further discussed the matter in his _Manual of Ante-Natal
Pathology: The Foetus_ (Ch. XXVII); he is, however, more
interested in the establishment of hospitals for the diseases of
pregnancy than in the wider and more fundamental question of rest
for all pregnant women. In England there are, indeed, a few
institutions which receive unmarried women, with a record of good
conduct, who are pregnant for the first time, for, as
Bouchacourt remarks, ancient British prejudices are opposed to
any mercy being shown to women who are recidivists in committing
the crime of conception.