Elements of Social Science_, and the author's pseudonym to _A Doctor of
Medicine_. This book, which contains over 600 pages of small type, may be
truthfully described as the Bible of Neo-Malthusians, and includes, under
the curious heading _Sexual Religion_, a popular account of all venereal
and other diseases of sex. In the Preface to the first edition, [74] the
anonymous author states: "Had it not been the fear of causing pain to a
relation, I should have felt it my duty to put my name to this work; in
order that any censure passed upon it should fall upon myself alone." The
relation appears to have had a long life, because anonymity was preserved
for fifty years, presumably out of respect for his, or her, feelings: and
he, or she, must have lived as long as the author, who died in 1904 at the
age of seventy-eight; because the author's name was not revealed until a
posthumous edition, the thirty-fifth, appeared in 1905, from which we learn
that the book was written by the late Dr. George Drysdale, brother of
the first President of the Malthusian League, and uncle of the present
incumbent. The last edition, in recompense for its smudgy type, contains a
most welcome announcement by the publisher:

"PUBLISHER'S NOTE.--... It is due alike to the reader and the publisher
to explain why the present edition is printed (in the main) from
stereotypes that have seen fifty years' service. The cost of resetting
the work would be prohibitive on the basis of present (and probable
future) sales. To some extent the plates have been repaired; but such
an expedient can do no more than remove the worse causes of offence."

But the fact with which I am at present concerned is that in every edition
all contraceptive methods that apply to the male are _condemned_ for the
following reasons:

"The first of these modes [_coitus interruptus_] is physically