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sufferings and effects of parturition, and thought they committed no sin. But a means is discovered by which the sufferings of the mother may be relieved far more effectually and then they immediately denounce this higher amount of relief as a high sin. Gaining your end, according to their religious views, imperfectly was no sin—gaining your end more fully and perfectly, is, they argue, an undiluted and unmitigated piece of iniquity."

The extraordinary parallel between the language and kind of argument used by those who objected to vaccination and chloroform with that used by those who to-day oppose contraception on "religious" grounds is so remarkable that there is little doubt that in another twenty years or less those same "arguments" will be used and those same objurgations hurled at some other advance of scientific alleviation of human suffering, and that no priest or cleric will dare to inveigh against birth control then, just as to-day none dares to repeat the sermons of his predecessors. against chloroform.

A final answer to all such "religious" "arguments" was given by Sir James Simpson himself in words which I cannot better, and so will quote:—