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CHAPTER FIVE

removing such incentives to vice as indecent literature, suggestive plays and films, the open or secret sale of contraceptives, and the continued existence of brothels" (my italics).

Although it is not a positive Birth Control measure, total abstention from the coital act in marriage has psychological and physiological reactions of sufficient seriousness to warrant its consideration in a medical work. This method of procedure is more usually insisted upon by the woman than by any but sub-normally sexed men, although there are ordinary men who have been led to believe that it is their duty to take this attitude towards marriage.

The physiological results on the man of total abstention extending over many months or years are very numerous, and depend in their intensity of expression on the physiological type of the man.[1]

It should be noted that the deprivation of coitus in marriage is physiologically a different thing from chastity in the unmarried man. The daily (sometimes hourly)

  1. ↑ See M. C. Stopes (1920): Evidence before the National Birth Rate Commission, pp. 242-255 in "Problems of Population and Parenthood, being the Second Report of the Chief Evidence taken by the National Birth Rate Commission." Pp. clxvi, 423. London, 1920.

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