Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/279

The early history of the subject in Europe is even more obscure. What happened in early Christian times I do not know. By the time of the Decameron, however, we are given some indication that contraception was available and utilized by some members of the population, although probably not by those who would have been most justified in its use.

A book of exceptional interest and profundity is "Les Maîtres d'Amour," an Arabic manual of the sixteenth century which I only know- through the French translation, and which is well deserving of study even by modern sexologists. It contains profound observations of physiological and psychological matters which I regret I have only recently read, as I should have benefited by their persual before writing "Married Love" as this work supplements and confirms several views which there I maintained rather tentatively. This book, in the sixteenth century, gives advice in connection with contraception and is, so far as I am aware, the first widely published and available information on what may be described as modern chemical means of contraception, including the use of alum, which is of course, still one of the most