the College of Surgeons, also, where, indeed, the old lists are very imperfect, Mr. Victor Plarr, the librarian, after kindly making a search, has assured me that there is no record of the name.  Other varying explanations of the name have been offered, with more or less assurance, though usually without any proofs.  Thus, Hyrtl (Handbuch der Topographischen Anatomic, 7th ed., vol. ii, p. 212) states that the condom was originally called gondom, from the name of the English discoverer, a Cavalier of Charles II’s Court, who first prepared it from the amnion of the sheep; Gondom is, however, no more an English name than Condom.  There happens to be a French town, in Gascony, called Condom, and Bloch suggests, without any evidence, that this furnished the name; if so, however, it is improbable that it would have been unknown in France.  Finally, Hans Ferdy considers that it is derived from “condus”—­that which preserves—­and, in accordance with his theory, he terms the condom a condus.

The early history of the condom is briefly discussed by various writers, as by Proksch, Die Vorbauung der Venerischen Krankheiten, p. 48; Bloch, Sexual Life of Our Time, Chs.  XV and XXVIII; Cabanes, Indiscretions de l’Histoire, p. 121, etc.

The control of procreation by the prevention of conception has, we have seen, become a part of the morality of civilized peoples.  There is another method, not indeed for preventing conception, but for limiting offspring, which is of much more ancient appearance in the world, though it has at different times been very differently viewed and still arouses widely opposing opinions.  This is the method of abortion.

While the practice of abortion has by no means, like the practice of preventing conception, become accepted in civilization, it scarcely appears to excite profound repulsion in a large proportion of the population of civilized countries.  The majority of women, not excluding educated and highly moral women, who become pregnant against their wish contemplate the possibility of procuring abortion without the slightest twinge of conscience, and often are not even aware of the usual professional attitude of the Church, the law, and medicine regarding abortion.  Probably all doctors have encountered this fact, and even so distinguished and correct a medico-legist as Brouardel stated[437] that he had been not infrequently solicited to procure abortion, for themselves or their wet-nurses, by ladies who looked on it as a perfectly natural thing, and had not the least suspicion that the law regarded the deed as a crime.