When the effects of all this upon the children are considered, it is at once found that the question of Birth Control is intimately connected with the housing problem. The overcrowding in large slum families is notorious. At an early age the day is passed by these children in the street, where, filthy and untended, they receive little by way of notice from their elders except hard words or blows. Their nights are spent packed, in a fetid atmosphere, several together in the same bed from which they may witness their parents in sexual intercourse, sometimes their mother in labour, and where they are free to indulge in what, later in life, would be called incestuous practices with one another. The writer has on more than one occasion attended a woman in confinement while several children were watching her from a bed in the same room, there being, in the urgency of the situation, no time to dispose of them and nowhere immediately available to send them. * * * * * Substantially this is what has been said on each side of this complex question. Before proceeding to discuss the arguments heretofore propounded, it is necessary to emphasize the fact that from the technical point of view _a really satisfactory contraceptive does not yet exist_. The chief disadvantage attaching to the contraceptive used by the man is that it is quite impossible to induce the type of individual whose procreation we would wish to restrict to use any contraceptive at all. The child is usually begotten by such a parent when he is drunk, and everyone who has had experience of the conditions prevailing in bad slums will know that it is futile to expect to achieve anything along these lines through the man. The problem must be met through the woman who, unlike the man, has to put up with the discomfort and the pain of repeated pregnancies, and has to shoulder the main burden of large families. Were it not for this elementary human fact all attempts to teach Birth Control to the very poor and destitute would fail completely. Essentially, contraceptives which the woman can use are of two sorts, and involve two principles――namely, a mechanical or occlusive, and a chemical or spermicidal principle. The objections to the first are two, namely that they are far from being fool-proof, and that unless sanctioned by a doctor their use can be followed by serious harm. It will be clear to any medical man that for a patient suffering from gonorrhœal cervicitis, or indeed from any condition involving a chronic cervical discharge, the use of an occlusive pessary may lead to disastrous consequences. The broadcasting of promiscuous advice as to the utilization of these objects in the absence of an examination by a competent medical man or woman is therefore to be strongly condemned.