Safe Marriage: A Return to SanityRout, Ettie Annie
Science
Safe Marriage: A Return to Sanity
Rout, Ettie Annie
Birth control; Contraception
This book embodies the considered opinions of twenty-five years' practical
experience of adult life--as an official reporter and journalist, as a
voluntary war-worker, and as a married woman. For many of the thoughts and
expressions used I am indebted to large numbers of men and women whom I
cannot name, and with whom I have been personally and professionally
associated in different parts of the world. I am also indebted to 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 formulae 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
formulae, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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