That there is a small percentage of the medical profession which is animated by a mercenary motive in regard to the giving of contraceptive instruction and would therefore stand for a “doctors only” bill must be regretfully admitted, but with the cheerful guess that it is a very small proportion. There is one leading obstetrician known to the writer who protested against his wife’s attending a parlor meeting on birth control, on the ground that “if you encourage that sort of thing, you know our income will be cut in two.” Instances are not unknown too, of physicians who have recommended a “doctors only” law, and who have profiteered quite shockingly in the contraceptives which they sell at present unlawfully to their patients. The most forthright instance known to the writer was that of a physician who was very strenuous in advocating a “doctors only” law, so much so that he was the means of having that recommendation formulated officially by a local but large and important medical association. In private conversation he admitted all the reasons for a complete repeal of the restrictive laws; he granted that the subject was not obscene, that ignorance and half knowledge made wide-spread suffering and disaster in family life, that people should be able to get reliable scientific instruction, and get it quickly. Yet he stuck to the “doctors only” idea, in its most narrow form, that is, that no information should be available except by personal consultation with a doctor. He was fearful lest the repeal of the Federal ban would produce “a flood of quackery.” When asked if he did not have confidence that the medical profession would rise to the occasion, and to educate the public as it ought to be educated on this subject, just as it rose to the occasion when the war came and educated both the soldiers and the public on the matter of venereal disease, his answer was, “What do you take us for? We are not reformers. We are busy men with our livings to earn.” He was unwilling for the public to have a chance for quick education on this subject by means of authoritative books and pamphlets, but insisted upon their having it exclusively dependent upon the slow process of being informed one at a time by a visit to a doctor’s office. The first consideration was that nothing should lessen the doctor’s opportunity for earning his living. Contrasted with this attitude is that of physicians like Dr. Lawrence Litchfield of Pittsburgh, former President of the Pennsylvania State Medical Society, who spoke at the Hearings in Washington on the Cummins-Vaile Bill, and whose remarks have been quoted in a previous chapter. Representative similar opinions are the following: