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over the country are taking an unprecedented interest in contraceptive methods, and many are feeling justly aggrieved that no information on the subject was included in their academic courses of training. A few letters selected from large numbers in the possession of the author of this book are given in Chapter XIII, p. 368, and indicate feelings which are widespread. A modern and humane civilization must control conception or sink into barbaric cruelty to individuals. What our progenitors achieved crudely and clumsily, often painfully, we, aided by modern scientific knowledge, can and should achieve painlessly and precisely.

Apart from the needs of individual patients, a word should be said of the national, indeed the racial position. For want of contraceptive measures the low-grade stocks are breeding in an ever-increasing ratio in comparison to the high-grade stocks, to the continuous detriment of the race. Hence the medical practitioner who has a practice among the poor and ignorant, and particularly among the low-grade elements, has a double duty to inculcate contraceptive knowledge, a duty to his individual patients and a duty to the State. This aspect of the subject will not be enlarged upon in this book, but is