CHAPTER III

METHODS


There are certain points in regard to methods of preventing conception
which should be made clear.

It is, of course, obvious that conception can be voluntarily
controlled by abstention from intercourse except when children are
desired. This has been called a counsel of perfection. It could only
rightly be so described where such a method of life was both desired
and approved by both husband and wife. It would not be a fair thing
for either to enforce a practically celibate life on the other without
the fullest understanding and consent before the marriage vows were
taken.

But conception can also be controlled by avoidance of those parts of
the monthly cycle in which conception most commonly takes place. That
in the great majority of women there is a time in the monthly cycle
when no conception occurs has been noted for a long time. The
rough-and-ready method of reckoning the date of birth in relations to
the last menstrual period is an example of the assumption that
conception will probably have taken place a week later, and the
frequency with which such reckoning is justified shows that it is not
altogether unfounded. During the war it was possible to make some more
exact observations owing to the short leave granted to soldiers to
visit their homes. Seigel has published a paper in the "Münchener