Page:Blackwell 1898 Scientific method in biology.pdf/54

42 1896, in exposing the grave abuse of this branch of surgery, estimates that there were 500,000 castrated women in France, and one in every 250 women throughout Europe. He ﬁnds the decrease of the birth-rate to coincide with the abuse of ovariotomy. 'Dr. Chanu affirmed, before a jury unable to refute his assertion, that the abuse of ovariotomy has done more harm to France in ten years than the Prussian bullets did in 1870, and that the causes of the depopulation of France are closely allied to the practice of the castration of women.'

The prevention of disease in the organs of generation must be sought for persistently in improved education of the young—the male as well as the female—and in JUST relations of the sexes.

Operative surgery should excite strong suspicion when it enables a Dr. Keppler to exalt 'marriage with a castrated woman as the ideal of a neo-Malthusian union, the only way of securing its object without endangering health and happiness.'

Of the same nature as the prurigo secandi of