The evolution of sex / by Professor Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Patrick Geddes
Date:
[1900]
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The evolution of sex / by Professor Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 94 THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. the details of the various methods, we must refer to the Mahhusian literature ; but a brief outline is imperative, even for an approximate understanding of the problem. {a.) Thus we have the suggestion that intercourse should be limited to the relatively infertile period most remote from menstruation, when conception may indeed occur, but with less probability than at other periods. Although gynaecologists are disagreed as to the degree of this probability, there can be little doubt that such limitation would have a useful influence, although in itself confessedly incomplete. The so-called artificiality of control is here reduced to a minimum, and the suggestion is obviously in harmony with that increased temperance which all must allow to be desirable. (/л) In the second place, there are methods employed by the males, such as that of withdrawal before the emission of the seminal fluid, a habit common enough both in savage and civilised communities. Fertilisation is in this way ab¬ solutely prevented, but apart from a more general objection to be afterwards emphasised, such a practice is maintained by some to be injurious to the male, and yet more to the female. Moreover, although the risks of over-population and female exhaustion by child-bearing are here minimised, there is still risk of male exhaustion. {c.) Thirdly, although again under the severe criticism of some of the medical experts, there are means em])loyed by the females, for securing by means of pessaries that the spermatozoa do not come into contact with the ovum, or by means of washes that the male elements are rendered ineffectual. In reply to the medical objections to both these methods of artificial check, it is answered {a) that it may in many cases be necessary to choose between two evils, of \vhich the risk involved in the artificial check may be much less than that involved in con¬ tinued child-bearing ; (/;) that it is hardly a fair argument as yet to urge that the proposed checks of neo-Malthusianism are fraught with danger. As to the popularly supposed pre¬ ventive check of prolonged nursing one baby in the hope of thereby preventing a new conception, it is necessary to em¬ phasise that nursing does not effect this, and that the prolonga¬ tion of the lacteal function and diet beyond their natural linuts is seriously injurious alike to mother and offspring. Even recognising some of these objections, the neo-Malthu- sians urge the number of distinct advantages,—the reduction