The advocates of birth control assert that it lessens venereal diseases. It does not; it increases the spread of venereal disease. The more reasonable among the birth control propagandists are anxious lest their public talks suggest temptation to the young. There is at present for youth the deterrent of the natural consequences of lust; with birth control knowledge spread broadcast that check is removed and promiscuity will become more general, because safer socially. Venereal diseases will spread also as incontinence spreads. Nowhere in the world has the crime of birth control been practised as in France nor for a longer time, and in that country together with the lowest birth rate in the world there is the highest death rate from venereal diseases according to Dr. Dublin the statistician of the New York Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Not long ago one of the leading medical writers of France, Doyen, said in the Academy of Medicine in Paris that syphilis is the chief cause of death in France. France now asserts she has given over birth control, but that is a hard disease to cure after it has been established. Unchastity is its own punishment, and if France goes the way of those nations that have died along the pathway of civilization, and great would be the pity, she has nothing to blame for it but this abominable moral leprosy, birth control. She is as striking an example of the insanity of birth control as Russia is of the insanity of communism. INDEX Abnormal pelves, 133, 134, 135 Abortion, 91 after fifth month, 102 agents of, 117 American law on, 119 causes of, 92 civil law on, 121 Council of Lerida on, 115 Council of Worms on, 115 decretal of Gregory on, 115 direct, 109 excommunication for, 116, 117 Gregory XIV on, 116 habitual, 98 Holy Office decrees on, 118 homicide in, 110 incomplete, 101 inevitable, 101 irregularity and, 117 morality of, 109-114 morphine in, 101 paternal causes of, 95 Pius IX on, 116 precautions against, 105, 106 prognosis after, 100 sepsis after, 105 Sixtus V on, 115 statistics of, 97, 98 symptoms of, 99 syphilis and, 107 tampon, use of, 103 therapeutic, 107, 109 threatened, 99 treatment of, 102 violence and, 94 Abruptio placentae, 144 causes of, 144 effects of, 144 Acute yellow atrophy of the liver, 186 Aggressor, 17, 19 Amnion, 52 Amphiaster, 44 Anaesthesia and the fetus, 93 Analgine, 240 Animal heat, 71 Animal life, 48 Animation, 33, 39 Aristotle on, 39 biologists on, 49 Conklin on, 73 Fienus on, 35 Greek fathers on, 33 Greek philosophers on, 33 St. Alphonsus on, 39 St. Anselm on, 35 St. Augustine on, 34 St. Gregory of Nyssa on, 35 St. Thomas on, 35 Zacchias on, 36 Aortic stenosis in pregnancy, 175 Apparent death, 82 Appendicitis in pregnancy, 152 Archenteron, 50