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and so brought them away, in order to have him prosecuted and punished.
But I leave the Mountebank, my Business is with the unhappy Ladies, who venture upon these dark Doings, in pursuit of the wicked Design against Child-bearing; the run great risques in taking such Medicines; and 'tis great odds but that, first or last, they Ruin themselves by it. This Wretch of a Quack could, it seems, kill the Child or the Mother, which he pleased; and you may, by a wrong Application, do both, kill the Child and the Mother both at once, and so be a Self-murther, and a murtherer of your own Offspring both together; at least, 'tis an Article worth a little of the Lady's Thought when she goes about such a doubtful Piece of Work as this is; and if she should come to a Mischance, she would perhaps support the Reproach of it but very hardly; I mean, if she has any reserves of Conscience and Reflexion about her.
Again: If it does not reach her Life, it goes another length without Remedy; she poisons her Body, she locks up Nature, she damns her self to a certain and eternal Barrenness for the Time to come; and as boldly, as she says, she desires it to be so, does not value it, and the like. She might consider, that it may so happen that she may alter her Mind; nay, she may come to the Extream the other Way, and I have more than once, nay, very often, known it to be so.
Nor is it improbable but that her Mind may be the most likely to alter, when she knows she is brought to an impossibility of altering it. Nothing is more frequent than for a Woman to reject what she may have, when she mayhave
