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CONTRACEPTION

of conception, allows the preventive means of the use of the "safe period." The Rev. Mgr. W. F. Brown, Vicar-General of a Roman Church, said, under cross-examination by the Birth Rate Commission: "Where all other deterrents fail, married couples may be allowed to limit intercourse to the inter-menstrual period, sometimes called tempus ageneseos."[1] He follows this by the warning that the method is not perfectly safe, thus showing more wisdom than the Anglicans who now give the same advice but treating the "safe period" as really safe, bring both themselves and the ecclesiastical position into contempt.

The length of the supposed "safe period" varies in individual women; in some it lasts over a fortnight; in some it lasts but three or four days; in many it does not exist at all. It is recorded in the literature that the woman can determine this for herself,[2] and I have had this confirmed by women who have been known to me, not by mere cor-

  1. ↑ Report of the National Birth Rate Commission, 1917, "The Declining Birth Rate," London, 1917. Second edition. Pp. xiv, 450, see p. 393, and also p. 403.
  2. ↑ R. T. Trall, M.D. (1866): "Sexual Physiology: A Scientific and Popular Exposition of the Fundamental Problems in Sociology." Third ed. Pp. xiv, 312; 78 illustrations + Appendix. New York and London, 1866.

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