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CONTRACEPTION

reliable "safe period," the only true form of relative sterility which we can at present recognize and investigate. I say this with deliberate intention because in my opinion intelligent study of this matter is at present always confused and almost all the arguments of thinkers and statisticians are invalidated by the fact of the enormous prevalence of gonorrhœa, mumps and other sterilizing diseases, histories of which are not inquired into before statistical and other arguments are deduced from merely numerical records.

It will be recalled that recently Pell reopened discussion on the subject of the tendency to natural infertility.[1] His data were mostly statistical, but I feel the need of inquiring into the physiological basis of these data, and I think I see the physiological type tending toward a natural sterility, in those who have a well-marked "safe period." The subject is full of interest and should be further investigated; it is, however, rather outside the scope of the present work.

To return, therefore, to the use of the

  1. ↑ C. E. Pell (1921): "The Law of Births and Deaths: Being a Study of the Variation in the Degree of Animal Fertility under the Influence of the Environment." Pp. 192. London, 1921.

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