that in two-fifths of sterile marriages the man is at fault; one-third of such marriages are the result of venereal diseases in the husband himself, or transmitted to the wife.  Gonorrhoea is not now considered so important a cause of sterility as it was a few years ago; Schenk makes it responsible for only about thirteen per cent. sterile marriages (cf.  Kisch, The Sexual Life of Woman).  Pinkus (Archiv fuer Gynaekologie, 1907) found that of nearly five hundred cases in which he examined both partners, in 24.4 per cent. cases, the sterility was directly due to the husband, and in 15.8 per cent. cases, indirectly due, because caused by gonorrhoea with which he had infected his wife.

When sterility is due to a defect in the husband’s spermatozoa, and is not discovered, as it usually might be, before marriage, the question of impregnating the wife by other methods has occasionally arisen.  Divorce on the ground of sterility is not possible, and, even if it were, the couple, although they wish to have a child, have not usually any wish to separate.  Under these circumstances, in order to secure the desired end, without departing from widely accepted rules of morality, the attempt is occasionally made to effect artificial fecundation by injecting the semen from a healthy male.  Attempts have been made to effect artificial fecundation by various distinguished men, from John Hunter to Schwalbe, but it is nearly always very difficult to effect, and often impossible.  This is easy to account for, if we recall what has already been pointed out (ante p. 577) concerning the influence of erotic excitement in the woman in securing conception; it is obviously a serious task for even the most susceptible woman to evoke erotic enthusiasm a propos of a medical syringe.  Schwalbe, for instance, records a case (Deutsche Medizinisches Wochenschrift, Aug., 1908, p. 510) in which,—­in consequence of the husband’s sterility and the wife’s anxiety, with her husband’s consent, to be impregnated by the semen of another man,—­he made repeated careful attempts to effect artificial fecundation; these attempts were, however, fruitless, and the three parties concerned finally resigned themselves to the natural method of intercourse, which was successful.  In another case, recorded by Schwalbe, in which the husband was impotent but not sterile, six attempts were made to effect artificial fecundation, and further efforts abandoned on account of the disgust of all concerned.

Opinion, on the whole, has been opposed to the practice of artificial fecundation, even apart from the question of the probabilities of success.  Thus, in France, where there is a considerable literature on the subject, the Paris Medical Faculty, in 1885, after some hesitation, refused Gerard’s thesis on the history of artificial fecundation, afterwards published independently.  In 1883, the Bordeaux legal tribunal declared that artificial