Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/235

said "In regard to these glands, Professor Thomson wants to know, 'What then, is their function? Are they secreting or absorbent? In truth the views on the subject are very vague' (italics mine). Whose views? I do not think that any gynæcologist has any doubt on the matter, nor do I suppose any physiologist would have much difficulty in deciding between secretion and absorption."

The argument in Professor Thomson's paper which received the most general attention was contained in his concluding paragraph, in which he said of contraceptives that "The employment of such methods [although he does not specify which] while preventing fertilization may also be the means of depriving the female of certain secretions which may exercise a far-reaching influence on her economy."

As the Editor of the British Medical Journal refused to publish any letter from me on the subject, even when requested to do so by Professor Sir William Bayliss, F.R.S., the great physiologist, I sent a short letter to Health.^[1] About Prof. Thomson's article "I have two things to say. The first is my ever-recurrent astonishment that