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effect of grease placed in the vagina. They were also expert in abortion (see also p. 243) and this perhaps inhibited any desire for contraception.

A medical correspondent tells me that Chinese women still trust the very primitive method of drinking cold water directly after coitus, and it is reasonable to suppose that, before the blight of modern "civilized" ignorance spread, this knowledge would be widely distributed.

At present there is a tendency (see p. 48) to use the word "onanism" (see also p. 69) to denote all kinds of contraceptive measures, but in earlier days it was used to denote masturbation. This act was used as a birth control measure in marriage, and concerning it there exists a curious literature in the seventeen hundreds, of which only one or two textbooks will be mentioned. In 1723 the following interesting paragraph appeared Speaking of masturbation—"This practice in a Marry'd State (as some of Those whose Letters he produces, who refrained from their Wives, for fear of multiplying Children, and yet practised Masturbation) with a Child-bearing Woman, is labouring indeed at the Destruction of our Kind, and striking at the Creation it self: It is, in some measure, the same