: Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity by Rout Ettie Annie Lane William Arbuthnot Sir Commentator - Birth control; Contraception Sociology

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FOREWORD xiii

NOTE AND ADVERTISEMENT 75

"Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore, And the Individual withers, and the World is more and more."

TENNYSON.

FOREWORD.

I have to thank the Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease, the National Birth-Rate Commission, and the Joint Select Committee on Criminal Law Amendment Bills for recording various statements and evidence.

It remains only to state this fact: That on January 25th, 1922, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Sir Frederick Mott, Surgeon-Commander Hamilton Boyden, of the Royal Navy, and Mr. Harman Freese, of Freese & Moon, manufacturing chemists, of 59, Bermondsey Street, London, S.E.1, met at my home to decide upon the best medical formulae for self-disinfecting ointment for men and contraceptive-disinfecting-suppositories for women. Mr. Freese made up sanitary tubes and sanitary suppositories in accordance with these formulae, but he is prohibited by law from recommending these for the prevention of venereal disease, and forbidden to supply printed directions with them, whereas similar medicaments are being retailed with printed directions in the State of Pennsylvania, and the Health Department circularises medical practitioners thus:--

"The self-treatment packet, obtainable at drug stores, to arrest venereal infection after exposure, is approved by the State Department of Health on the same principle as is antitoxin given to diphtheria contacts. Proof is lacking that the use of this packet lowers social standards. Reduction in the incidence of venereal disease is a direct result."

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Having gone so far as to admit the desirability and necessity of the medical prevention of sexual diseases, the Roman Catholic Church will certainly find itself later unable to deny the desirability and necessity of preventing the birth of children liable to be born diseased or unfit. It is not practicable for a wife to take any suitable precautions against infection by a diseased husband, which precautions will not at the same time be effective, to a greater or lesser extent, in the prevention of conception. There is no half-way house in the matter of sexual hygiene.

ETTIE A. ROUT.

At present marriage is easily the most dangerous of all our social institutions. This is partly due to the colossal ignorance of the public in regard to sex, and partly due to the fact that marriage is mainly controlled by lawyers and priests instead of by women and doctors. The legal and religious aspects of marriage are not the primary ones. A marriage may be legal--and miserable; religious--and diseased. The law pays no heed to the suitability of the partners, and the Church takes no regard for their health. Nevertheless, the basis of marriage is obviously mating, or sexual intercourse. Without that there is no marriage, and with it come not merely health and happiness but life itself. Cut out sexual intercourse, and society becomes extinct in one generation. Every generation must, of necessity, pass through the bodies of its women; there is no other way of obtaining entry into the world. Hence, it is clearly the duty of women to understand precisely the processes involved, from beginning to end.

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