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CHAPTER EIGHT

dence before the Birth Rate Commission, Monsignor Brown said "Where all other deterrents fail, married couples may be allowed to limit intercourse to the intermenstrual period, sometimes called tempus ageneseos."[1] This most unnatural method has already been discussed (see p. 84 ante), and having yielded this I see no possible logical standpoint on which to maintain disapproval of the better and more wholesome methods.

The attitude of most Religions is so mystical, particularly-in all their considerations of sex, that various sects have arrived at the most amazing conclusions: to say nothing of the fact that they often contradict each other, they frequently contradict the patent facts of life. An illuminating illustration of the extremes to which theological rule will go is seen in Hindu customs. In Webb's most interesting Pathologia Indica:[2] we read "I find it enjoined in the Hindu Shastras, that females should be

  1. ↑ See p. 393 in "The Declining Birth Rate, its Causes and Effects": Report of the Nat. Birth Rate Commission. 2nd ed. Pp. xiv, 450. London, 1917.
  2. ↑ Allan Webb, M.D. (1848) "Pathologia Indica, or the Anatomy of Indian Diseases, based upon morbid specimens, from all parts of the Indian Empire in the Museum of the Calcutta Medical College": Ed. 2. Pp. xxxiv, lxi, 304, 340 bis. Calcutta 1848 (Imperfect copy? Brit. Mus.).

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