It is needless to insist how intimately that secondary end of marriage is bound up with the practice of birth control. Without birth control, indeed, it could frequently have no existence at all, and even at the best seldom be free from disconcerting possibilities fatal to its very essence. Against these disconcerting possibilities is often placed, on the other side, the un-esthetic nature of the contraceptives associated with birth control. Yet, it must be remembered, they are of a part with the whole of our civilized human life. We at no point enter the spiritual save through the material. Forel has in this connection compared the use of contraceptives to the use of eye-glasses. Eye-glasses are equally un-esthetic, yet they are devices, based on Nature, wherewith to supplement the deficiencies of Nature. However in themselves un-esthetic, for those who need them they make the esthetic possible. Eye-glasses and contraceptives alike are a portal to the spiritual world for many who, without them, would find that world largely a closed book. Birth control is effecting, and promising to effect, many functions in our social life. By furnishing the means to limit the size of families which would otherwise be excessive it confers the greatest benefit on the family and especially on the mother. By rendering easily possible a selection in parentage and the choice of the right time and circumstances for conception it is again, the chief key to the eugenic improvement of the race. There are many other benefits, as is now generally becoming clear, which will be derived from the rightly applied practice of birth control. To many of us it is not the least of these that birth control effects finally the complete liberation of the spiritual object of marriage. ABORTION _THE PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS. By Joseph De Lee, M.D...._ It is said that there is one abortion to eight labors, but in all probability it is more frequent than this. Almost half of the child-bearing women have had a miscarriage before the thirty-fifth year. Statistics are of questionable value because hospital figures do not represent the conditions of private practice. Further, many occur in first weeks and pass under the diagnosis of delayed or profuse menstruation. Finally, many abortions are deliberately concealed. Page 426. _PRACTICE OF OBSTETRICS. By J. Clifton Edgar, M.D._ Immediate dangers of abortions are: hemorrhage, retention of an adherent placenta, sepsis, tetanus, perforation of the uterus. They also cause: sterility, anemia, malignant diseases, displacements, neurosis, and endometritis. Pages 338–9. _TRUCHTABTREIBUNG UND PRAVENTIVVERKEHR, IN ZUSAMMENHANG MIT DEM GEBURTENRUCKGANG; Eine Medizinische, Juristische und Sozialpolitische Betrachtung von Dr. Max Hirsch. Wurtzburg, Kabitzsch Verlag, 1914._