Page:Contraception; 1st ed. (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.94163).pdf/286

control owing to the confusion created by the differing uses of the word "Onanism."

This brings us to within a few years of the time of Malthus. Now the present generation has so often had dinned in its ears the claims of Malthus (and the totally distinct but generally associated claims of the Neo-Malthusians) that the fact of these early contraceptive practices is generally forgotten. More than that: Malthus' first edition was published in 1798 (and incidentally I should mention that this first edition is a very different thing indeed from his second edition) while almost anybody who talks about Malthus to-day reads the second or a later edition. In his first edition he re-stated the widespread idea that the world would long ago have been completely populated if it had not been for the population-reducing factors,—disease, epidemics, wars and misery. In his first edition, he offered no solution of this problem and no suggestions to relieve the situation. When emboldened to do so by public opinion, which had been roused to great condemnation of his callous presentation, he introduced into the later edition the idea of late marriage as a birth control measure designed to keep the population within bounds, but he did not advocate any contraceptive means