numerous suggestions made by reformers for controlling the fecundity of
the poor.

Of surgical methods, castration of males, Oophorectomy or the removal of
the ovaries in women, and vasectomy, or the section of the cords of the
testicles, have all been suggested.

Annual castration of a certain number of the children of the popular
classes was not long ago seriously proposed by Weinhold.

Boies, in his "Prisoners and Paupers," declares that surgical
interference is the only method of dealing with the criminal, and
preventing him from reproducing his kind. He says:--"These organs have
no function in the human organism except the creation and gratification
of desire and the reproduction of the species. Their loss has no effect
upon the health, longevity, or abilities of the individual of adult
years. The removal of them therefore by destroying desire would actually
diminish the wants of nature and increase the enjoyments of life for
paupers. A want removed is equivalent to a want supplied. In other
words, such removal would be a positive benefit to the abnormal rather
than a deprivation, rather a kindness than an injury. This operation
bestowed upon the abnormal inmates of our prisons, reformatories, jails,
asylums, and public institutions, would entirely eradicate those
unspeakable evil practices which are so terribly prevalent, debasing,
destructive, and uncontrolled in them. It would confer upon the inmates
health and strength, for weakness and impotence, satisfaction and
comfort for discontent and insatiable desire."

Anæsthetics have ensured that these operations may be performed without
the slightest suspicion of pain, and with careful sympathetic surgery,