Safe Marriage | Page 2

the following medical journals for the publication, during the last five years, of many letters, articles, notes, etc.: The Lancet, _The British Medical Journal, Public Health, Municipal Engineering, Hospital_, New York Medical Journal, etc., etc.
I have to thank the Society for the Prevention of Venereal Disease, the National Birth-Rate Commission, and the Joint Select Committee (House of Lords) 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 formul? 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 formul?, 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."
But not only in the clear, cool air of American State Departments of Health is the knowledge and love of sexual cleanliness fructifying. In the Dublin Review for January-March, 1922, there is a wonderfully fine article on "The Church and Prostitution," by the Right Rev. Monsignor Provost W.F. Brown, D.D., V.G., in which he quotes from a very recent Moral Theology, "De Castitate," by the Rev. A. Vermeersch, S.J., Professor of Moral Theology at the Gregorian University, Rome, published in May, 1921. The author of "De Castitate" gives brief answers to three questions put to him, which Mgr. Brown quotes in the original Latin, and of which the following is a translation furnished by a Catholic priest:--
"You ask
1. Whether or not it is formally sinful to use antiseptic ointment before illicit intercourse.
2. Whether or not the use of such ointment may be advocated.
3. Whether or not it is lawful for chemists to sell it.
Ad. 1. Although it seems that in England (cf. Times, January, 1917) some have made a scrupulous distinction between the use of this ointment before and after, and have forbidden the former while approving the latter, you need make no such distinction (of course, supposing the ointment is not used by a woman to sterilize). It is not wrong to seek means, indifferent in themselves, which will prevent the evil consequences of sin.
Ad. 2. It would indeed be a sin to reveal such drugs or to persuade their use with the intention to induce a man to commit sin; but there is no harm in telling a man who is certainly going to sin how to avoid the consequences. Ad. 3. If men could be restrained from vice by prohibiting the sales, this should be done; but so many are ready to expose themselves to danger that you cannot hope for such a result from forbidding the sale. It is true this removes fear, but the general good, and the removal of danger to the innocent justifies this. Besides, it is a poor virtue which is kept from sin only by the fear of disease."
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.

I.--INTRODUCTION.
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