V. Confining myself to my sphere of what is morally right or wrong, I must be permitted to point out some gross violations of duty in some members of your honored profession. There are physicians so reckless of consequences and of principles alike as to advise at times the practice of illicit sexual intercourse. Let them beware; they are doing a very unwise and guilty act. Even if an immoral practice should save a human life, it may not be indulged, on the principle which must be by this time very familiar to your ears, that the end does not justify the means. And besides no good result can be expected from what is contrary to the law of nature and of nature's God. It was to punish sins of the flesh that the Deluge was sent, which destroyed nearly the whole human race. "All flesh had corrupted its way," says the sacred historian. It was to punish unlawful indulgence of lust that Sodom and Gomorrha were destroyed by fire from heaven; and the memory of these guilty cities is preserved in the very name of Sodomy. Onan, as the same sacred volume relates (Gen. xxxviii), performed the marriage act in a manner to frustrate it of its legitimate purpose, the generation of children, and the Lord slew him; and his sin is to this very day branded with his name and called Onanism. And yet in Christian lands physicians are found who will at times dare to recommend such practices to their patients. On the occasions mentioned, God punished the guilty miraculously; but that is not His usual way. He has so contrived our natures that sins committed against His laws in our bodies ordinarily bring a part of their punishment in their train, not the less certain because slower in its operation than a miracle would be. All the venereal diseases are there to act as earthy ministers of Heaven's justice, anticipating, and often mercifully averting, the punishments of the future world. VI. Besides private and secret tortures of body and mind, a public and most deplorable calamity has descended of late on our own vigorous young nation, as well as on some older lands, threatening in the not distant future the extinction of many of its most esteemed families and of what was, not long ago, a vigorous stock. The following article by Dr. Walter Lindley, Professor of Gynecology in the University of Southern California, will explain the matter better than my words could do. It was read in Los Angeles at a meeting of the Southern Californian Medical Society in June, 1895, and is printed in the "N. Y. Medical Journal" of August 17 of the same year (pp. 211 and following). It is headed "American Sterility;" I will quote freely from it: "The obstetrician finds his vocation disappearing among the American women from the face of the earth.