and he believes that these serious results are far more likely to happen than is always admitted by those who defend the legitimacy of such advice.  Nor will Moll admit that the physician is entitled to overlook the moral aspects of the question.  A physician may know that a poor man could obtain many things good for his health by stealing, but he cannot advise him to steal.  Moll takes the case of a Catholic priest who is suffering from neurasthenia due to sexual abstinence.  Even although the physician feels certain that the priest may be able to avoid all the risks of disease as well as of publicity, he is not entitled to urge him to sexual intercourse.  He has to remember that in thus causing a priest to break his vows of chastity he may induce a mental conflict and a bitter remorse which may lead to the worst results, even on his patient’s physical health.  Similar results, Moll remarks, may follow such advice when given to a married man or woman, to say nothing of possible divorce proceedings and accompanying evils.

Rohleder (Vorlesungen ueber Geschlechtstrieb und Gesamtes Geschlechtsleben der Menschen) adopts a somewhat qualified attitude in this matter.  As a general rule he is decidedly against recommending sexual intercourse outside marriage to those who are suffering from partial or temporary abstinence (the only form of abstinence he recognizes), partly on the ground that the evils of abstinence are not serious or permanent, and partly because the patient is fairly certain to exercise his own judgment in the matter.  But in some classes of cases he recommends such intercourse, and notably to bisexual persons, on the ground that he is thus preserving his patient from the criminal risks of homosexual practices.

It seems to me that there should be no doubt whatever as to the correct professional attitude of the physician in relation to this question of advice concerning sexual intercourse.  The physician is never entitled to advise his patient to adopt sexual intercourse outside marriage nor any method of relief which is commonly regarded as illegitimate.  It is said that the physician has nothing to do with considerations of conventional morality.  If he considers that champagne would be good for a poor patient he ought to recommend him to take champagne; he is not called upon to consider whether the patient will beg, borrow, or steal the champagne.  But, after all, even if that be admitted, it must still be said that the physician knows that the champagne, however obtained, is not likely to be poisonous.  When, however, he prescribes sexual intercourse, with the same lofty indifference to practical considerations, he has no such knowledge.  In giving such a prescription the physician has in fact not the slightest knowledge of what he may be prescribing.  He may be giving his patient a venereal disease; he may be giving the anxieties and responsibilities of an illegitimate child; the prescriber is quite in the dark.  He