_Fibroid Tumours_

Dr. Arthur E. Giles, Senior Surgeon to the Chelsea Hospital for Women,
endorsed Dr. Gibbons's remarks as to the great unhappiness resulting
from deliberately childless marriages, and he added that he had always
warned patients of this. He believed that quinine had a permanently bad
effect. Those who waited for a convenient season to have a child often
laid up trouble for themselves. On the question of fibroid tumours he
had come to the conclusion that these were not a cause but in a sense a
consequence of sterility. Women who were subjected to sexual excitement
with no physiological outlet appear to have a tendency to develop
fibroids. He would like the opinion to go forth from the section that
the use of contraceptives was a bad thing.

All these authorities are agreed that the practice of artificial sterility
during early married life is the cause of many women remaining childless,
although later on these women wish in vain for children. To meet this
difficulty one of the advocates of birth control advises all young couples
to make sure of some children before adopting these practices; thus
demanding of young parents, at the very time when it is most irksome, that
very sacrifice of personal comfort and prosperity to prevent which is the
precise object of the vicious practice. Nor is sterility the only penalty.
The disease known as neurasthenia arises both in women _and in men_ in
consequence of these methods. Dr. Mary Sharlieb, [67] after forty years'
experience of diseases of women, writes as follows:

"Now, on the surface of things, it would seem as if a knowledge of how
to prevent the too rapid increase of a family would be a boon to
over-prolific and heavily burdened mothers. There are, however, certain